this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
183 points (98.4% liked)

Today I Learned

16345 readers
388 users here now

What did you learn today? Share it with us!

We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.

** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**



Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Williams was one of three operators of the parts retrieval system, a five-story robot built by the Unit Handling Systems division of Litton Industries. The robot was designed to retrieve castings from high density storage shelves at the Flat Rock plant. Part of the machine included one-ton transfer vehicles, which were carts on rubber wheels equipped with mechanical arms to move castings to and from the shelves. When the robot gave erroneous inventory readings, Williams was asked to climb into the racks to retrieve parts manually. Another news account states the robot was not retrieving parts quickly enough.

He climbed into the third level of the storage rack, where he was struck from behind and crushed by one of the one-ton transfer vehicles, killing him instantly. His body remained in the shelf for 30 minutes until it was discovered by workers who were concerned about his disappearance.

His family sued the manufacturers of the robot, Litton Industries, alleging "that Litton was negligent in designing, manufacturing and supplying the storage system and in failing to warn [system operators] of foreseeable dangers in working within the storage area." In a 1983 jury decision, the court awarded his estate $10 million and concluded that there simply were not enough safety measures in place to prevent such an accident from happening. He would go down in history as the first recorded human death by robot. The award was raised to $15 million in January 1984. Litton settled with the estate of Williams for an undisclosed amount in exchange for Litton not admitting negligence.

top 19 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] ScampiLover 20 points 10 months ago (3 children)

If you ever work on a modern industrial system then you'll see all kinds of rules, safety measures and more fun

It often makes small jobs extremely tedious, but I always remind myself it's because the robot arm I'm looking at is strong enough to throw me across the room or crush my bones.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Movies underestimate how a robot could kill a human with a single punch.

Terminator didn't need firearms, it could just single punch everyone to death. Kind of crazy string chimps are but bigger, stronger and made of metal.

[–] ScampiLover 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

For me it's the acceleration and speed they don't comprehend.even "safe" collaborative robots can accelerate to huge speeds in the blink of an eye, and being electric they'll do it at maximum force

I've driven one into my head before and its remarkable how soft it was thanks to the tech involved but movies miss the fact that if it wanted, even a small arm could have gone through me

[–] FooBarrington 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Part of it is probably wrong extrapolation from experience. Even if I try to punch someone as hard as I can, there's a comparatively low limit of damage I can do. Sure, in the wrong spot I could kill someone or seriously hurt them - but my body severely limits what I can do so I don't hurt myself.

Robots don't have these natural limits. They can be programmed in, but code can always fail. A robot doesn't care if it will hurt itself by accelerating too quick or by continuously exerting high amounts of force. It's as mindless as a rock crushing somebody, and much more agile.

[–] BadRS 4 points 10 months ago

A rock with goals

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Oh yeah, I didn't thing of that. Electric motors tend to have near-instant max torque.

Terminator would sucker punch Sarah Connor so fast she would be dead before she knew what that big Austria guy at the door wanted.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/lTfGBCe-vpk?si=0u79j8wpaUe8pqzi

https://piped.video/lTfGBCe-vpk?si=0u79j8wpaUe8pqzi

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Half of those rules are written in blood

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There is a steel mill (recycling plant) in my town. They give tours every Friday. I have been 3 times, twice with teams of (software) engineers.

If you want to go see what engineering means when lives are on the line, tour a steel mill. Fucking amazing.

[–] ScampiLover 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You know what I mean! Never seen that exact kind of plant but yeah, automated heavy industry gets intense real fast

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Red hot rebar headed downstream at 40mph - holy shit!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] dalakkin 6 points 10 months ago

I'm going to guess that humans have killed far more robots. So the robots have some catch up to do.

[–] Harpsist 4 points 10 months ago

This REALLY depends on the definition of robot.

If you call a robot any mechanism that is designed to work then even the most simple pulley system is - by definition - a robot.

In which case. It's probably more then 6000 years ago.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Never forget

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Why is this article linked to site that just rips-off Wikipedia articles? Just post the original Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Williams_(robot_fatality)

[–] TIEPilot -3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics would have prevented this.

First Law:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Second Law:

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Third Law:

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

[–] Thekingoflorda 3 points 10 months ago

How would that prevent a malfunction from accidentally killing someone?