[HN Gopher] A robot in South Korea mistook a man for a box of ve...
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A robot in South Korea mistook a man for a box of vegetables and
killed him
Author : lando2319
Score : 65 points
Date : 2023-11-09 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| xwdv wrote:
| A man is dead from some software engineer's faulty programming.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Or perhaps from his own carelessness. We don't know if he
| followed proper procedures, staying out of reach of the robot
| arm, etc. while it was active. Like airport ground crew who
| walk too close to a running jet engine.
| plagiarist wrote:
| It should have been a lock out tag out preventing it from
| moving, especially if it was having reliability issues.
| t3rra wrote:
| skynet begins
| dboreham wrote:
| This already came up yesterday. The man was debugging the robot,
| presumably bypassing safety protocols in the process.
| Fabricio20 wrote:
| Previous Discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38199233
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
| ape4 wrote:
| They forgot to put Asimov's Rules of Robotics in the firmware
| mkl wrote:
| Asimov's laws require AGI, so are irrelevant at this point. Our
| robots can't reliably detect humans, let alone understand what
| could cause them harm.
| fabian2k wrote:
| My understanding is that this kind of industrial robot should
| never be active while humans are near. So one possibility would
| be that the usual safety precautions were ignored here as
| obviously a human was within reach while the robot was still
| powered on.
| mistercheph wrote:
| Yes, as far as I can understand the man and by extension his
| estate are liable for the damage to the machine and the
| disruption of the assembly line. The first of many preliminary
| injunctions against the family should be making their way
| through the court system about now.
| Cpoll wrote:
| Would you be making the same comment if this story was about
| an electrician that failed to shut off power before examining
| wiring? If not, why not?
| davzie wrote:
| Pretty sure it's satire / sarcasm!
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Yes, that's exactly the point - it seems to be sarcasm
| that suggests the writer believes it's immoral to say the
| person who tragically died did anything wrong in this
| situation. The poster above thus wonders whether an
| electrician who tragically dies after making a mistake in
| their job should also be held entirely blameless.
| bmitc wrote:
| I am very confused as to why the robot was operating with such
| power. According to the article, the robots pick up boxes of
| peppers and place them on a conveyor belt. How does that
| translate to such force so as to pick up an adult man, place
| him on the conveyor belt, and then crush his face and chest?
|
| There are clearly multiple safety protocols that were broken
| here, starting with something as simple as a lockout/tagout
| procedure and ending with robotic control system failures that
| should have recognized it was needing to apply much more force
| than expected to pick and place a box of peppers and also that
| the thing it was handling was not a box.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Normally robotic arms are either cobot arms or industrial
| arms.
|
| A cobot is relatively safe to be around. They're meant to
| work with humans nearby so generally you'd have to be both
| inattentive and unlucky to get an injury that needs any sort
| of treatment. But these arms are relatively expensive, slow,
| and most can barely handle the weight of a typical box of
| vegtable.
|
| Industrial arms like this are more common. They're less
| expensive, faster, and can handle an unusually large box of
| veggies no problem. And mostly any arm large enough to move
| the box far enough to be useful in your workspace is going to
| be able to lift way more weight. But these are not safe to be
| around and either inattention or bad luck when you're around
| it will send you to the hospital. And both at once and you
| end up like the poor worker in the story.
|
| Needless to say be careful around cobots but don't be careful
| around industrial arms, instead use some sort of lock out
| system that makes it impossible for the arm to move if you're
| in close proximity because there's no way anyone will ever be
| careful enough.
|
| So, I don't blame them for using an industrial arm. But there
| was a serious failure that occured to ever let a person into
| the area while the arm was live.
| hailruda wrote:
| This reminds me of Five Nights at Freddy's animatronics mistaking
| a human for an endoskeleton and murdering the human by shoving
| them into a suit [0]. Didn't think this could happen for real.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Nights_at_Freddy%27s#Game...
| Isamu wrote:
| Despite the headline, the robot arm itself probably has no smarts
| and is just triggered to follow a routine when external sensors
| on the line are activated. The issue is that the person may have
| been unaware that the robot was energized, and there should have
| been some safety interlock that de-energized the robot while the
| person was in the robot's work envelope.
| toss1 wrote:
| Assuming those assumptions are true, my question is whether the
| robot had separate power feeds to the sensors vs the actuators.
|
| If the worker needs to test/tune/adjust/repair the sensors, and
| needed that system energized, was the robot built in such a way
| that the sensor/control system could be energized, but the
| actuator motors de-energized?
|
| If not, the worker was stuck in a very dangerous position, and
| was effectively killed by the robot's designers.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Robot work cells are usually cordoned off with fencing
| protected from entry with safety sensors and trapped key
| interlocks on the gate doors. Though when servicing these can
| be bypassed by service personnel which was likely the case
| here. I've read of cases like these where service techs or
| engineers commissioning a system were severely injured or
| killed by these machines. You really need to be extremely
| careful around mechanical stuff like this.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| My first thought was that some version of lockout/tagout
| protocols should have been employed.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| Yeah, I really question whether this story is actually any kind
| of news or just in the headlines because there's a robot
| involved, where in reality it's the equivalent of "guy sticks
| hand in wood chipper, loses hand." Sad, obviously, but not
| really fundamentally different from any of the other injuries
| that happen when working with heavy equipment.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Wood chipper mistakes man's hand for a piece of wood
| JCharante wrote:
| I do not have faith in worker protection laws and safety culture
| in Korea. Many do not spend the money to prevent similar deaths
| from happening again and I boycott several brands and brands
| owned by those groups.
|
| 2018:
| https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.amp.asp?newsIdx=254...
|
| 2022:
| https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1...
|
| https://www.leftvoice.org/how-workers-and-socialists-are-res...
| LoganDark wrote:
| Wait, so the robot detected him, and turned away from the
| conveyor belt to grab him and place him onto the conveyor belt?!
| eduction wrote:
| Also posted yesterday (technically a dupe, although that one was
| paywalled and this one isn't):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38199233
| eduction wrote:
| (And FWIW much of that discussion situated this as less about
| robots and more about accidents involving heavy industrial
| machinery and people failing to "lockout/tagout" when repairing
| it.)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| In other news, a robot in North Korea mistook a box of vegetables
| for a man and killed them.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| 'mistook'
|
| Tip: When the robot's make an offer you can't refuse, don't
| refuse it.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| What is a man if not a miserable box of vegetables
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| A structurally unsound box of vegetables from the robots point
| of view
| fallingknife wrote:
| You are made 100% from metabolized plants, so that's not
| entirely inaccurate.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Also water and salt (plus some magnesium chloride if you eat
| tofu many other industrially-made chemicals without plant-
| based precursors unless you avoid nearly all processed foods)
| robomartin wrote:
| Powerful fast-moving machines will, if you are not careful, one
| day humble you or worse. I posted on the other thread about my
| experience with a CNC mill accident many years ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38210671
|
| At a much lower power level, I had a couple harrowing experiences
| with powerful industrial grade table saws (4 to 5 HP spindle). In
| one case it grabbed this piece of plastic being cut and launched
| it 25 feet at such speed that it penetrated the door of a
| refrigerator that just happened to be in its path.
|
| You can never take powerful equipment for granted. And, if it is
| computer controlled, well, make sure you can see the power cord
| being disconnected before you even think about getting anywhere
| close to parts that can hurt you.
|
| One of the things I taught my kids when doing projects with power
| tools at home is to unplug the cord after you are done
| cutting/drilling/whatever and place the power plug right on the
| machine where you can see it. With time you get used to not
| approaching the machine unless you know where that plug is...in
| the wall or on the machine.
| Houssameddine wrote:
| But I wonder why these machines should be that powerful. Sure
| there are use cases when you need the machine to do heavy work,
| but in the case of lifting boxes of peppers and transferring
| them onto pallets, the robot shouldn't be that powerful to be
| able to crush a man's chest.
| bmitc wrote:
| > make sure you can see the power cord being disconnected
| before you even think about getting anywhere close to parts
| that can hurt you
|
| That plus the cord and outlet being locked out preventing
| anyone from reconnecting it while you're working on it.
| testemailfordg2 wrote:
| Despite of the headline, I think its important for us to
| understand and realize that the people who would have built these
| systems, didn't have human safety around these bots as first
| priority. A lesson for all of us to remind management that bad PR
| for a new product or service will hurt their careers more than
| the bullet point gained on resume for speed and efficiency.
| tremon wrote:
| _the people who would have built these systems, didn 't have
| human safety around these bots as first priority_
|
| How do you know? Were you in the room when these systems were
| designed?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
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(page generated 2023-11-09 23:02 UTC)