this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him — Malfunctioning sensor system blamed for technician’s death at Korean food plant::Malfunctioning sensor system blamed for technician's death at Korean food plant

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[–] [email protected] 130 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Sounds like plant management needs to enforce lock-out tag-out procedure. That's rule 1 of working on heavy machinery, no matter how safe you think it is.

[–] rockSlayer 44 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The tech probably had work requirements that made it impossible to actually have time to do safety procedures. Management is always a part of the problem in these situations.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I haven't been in a plant where management tells everyone to go crazy and ignore safety because 1. they aren't monsters and 2. lawsuits. They're financially motivated to do the right thing. When I saw the article, my first thought was this person disabled mandatory lockouts because it's convenient.

[–] rockSlayer 3 points 1 year ago

I'm not insinuating that. I'm thinking that it's more like management putting on a face to say "do all of the safety procedures. You have 30 minutes to fix this issue" when safety procedures take 30 minutes by itself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Have you been in a South Korean plant? They famously have terrible working conditions, though they’re starting to fight back against that.

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[–] schmidtster 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Did you read the article? The guy was diagnosing a sensor issue, can’t LOTO, you would have no power to diagnose the issue with.

[–] [email protected] 92 points 1 year ago (5 children)

You could disable the motors. You can read out sensors without the arm moving. And if the arm needs to move, do it from a distance (cable connected or wireless).

A human shouldn't be anywhere near moving robotic arms, ever.

[–] BoxOfFeet 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The guy worked for the robot manufacturer, according to the article! You'd think would have been much more aware of the robot's reach, and the safety procedures. Plus, I'm pretty sure you can step through the robot programming slowly. I've seen our programmers do it. Please don't tell me he was in the cell standing next to the crate or whatever, with that thing running full production speed.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

To be clear, you oft times can’t easily debug live code on a piece of machinery. Unless it was specifically designed to accommodate, 99/100 times it’ll be nigh impossible without digging in a soldering things to other things. And that is usually not something done on a factory floor.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

A sensor issue on any machine, intelligent it not, is not justification to forgo a lock out, tag out of that machine.

It is like a shredder that only activates if something is in the hopper. If the sensor can only be accessed in the hopper, the shredder should not be operational when fixing the sensor.

[–] kiwifoxtrot 12 points 1 year ago (7 children)

There are many ways to do this safely. All robotic arms come with a disable key that powers off the axis motors, latches all the brakes, but leaves the sensors and end of arm tooling powered up to troubleshoot. Troubleshooting can also be done via PC and watching inputs/ outputs on the program.

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

The article I had read about it said it was being looked at for sensor issues in the first place. It was extra dumb to be looking at that live robot.

[–] Zehzin 121 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Why is it programmed to kill boxes of peppers

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

For the same reason that someone decided that it would be a good idea to have machines be able to generate energy from organic material….

Yeah, let’s build robots that can feed on humans to recharge their batteries, no way that’d be a problem.

[–] gansheim 11 points 1 year ago

Horizon Zero Dawn showed us that this doesn't have any potential to be problematic...

[–] Sygheil 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

And live on a world where you can defy physics mods "bullet time"

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[–] Inmate 12 points 1 year ago

It's 로봇 크러쉬 [Robot Crusher] brand. They advertise this cooking process and must therefore kill boxes of peppers with prejudice and treat their structure with total disrespect.

© 2023 로봇 크러쉬™

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[–] Cosmicomical 101 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Wtf is this fear mongering? I'm totally for luddism but this is something else. Not the first time a machine kills a person, and will not be the last. Put panic stop buttons on any machine that can potentially harm a human, and nowadays you can add a range of sensors that can help identify a living thing from a box of vegetables. This is entirely the fault of designers.

Btw i refuse to read the article if the post keeps this title and picture.

[–] shalafi 27 points 1 year ago

"Man Dies in Industrial Accident" is a lame headline. 🙄

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

it had a sensor for it, it malfunctioned, now why it wasn't turned off while the tech was in there is another story. If they were testing it, they should have been a safe distance away or had it mostly powered off. This is just unsafe work environment.

[–] jagungal 12 points 1 year ago

My first question when I read the article was why didn't they lock out/tag out the machine before getting in it?

[–] Kushan 9 points 1 year ago

A thread on a different article about the same thing had someone demanding a change in law to make robots safer and stop this happening again because 48 people were killed by robots in the USA...since 1992.

Yes, there's a lot to take in with that. Yes, some people are idiots.

[–] MiltownClowns 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wait until you hear how crazy dangerous this thing called the cotton gin is.

[–] shalafi 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So I never understood the importance of the cotton gin until I grew some cotton for giggles.

Y'all ever tried to get those seeds out?! There's 4-8 per boll and they are enmeshed. Just cleaning a couple of puffs is a tough chore. And waste as little as possible. Now do 40 acres. The bales around here are about the size of a short tractor trailer box.

Also, try picking cotton some time. Puts a whole new spin on slavery. By harvest time those leaves turn into pointy, hardened razor blades. I barely reached in and one slide up the side of my finger about 1/2". Took 2-weeks to heal since I apparently got a fat inoculation of bacteria.

Now do it fast, bent over, from pre-dawn to just past dusk. And get whipped if you don't hustle. Slave's hands had to be lumps of unfeeling callous.

Oh, and the part school didn't teach about the cotton gin; It made cotton vastly more profitable. Guess where I'm going with this.

And to lighten the mood, have some racist ass field trip.

[–] schmidtster 6 points 1 year ago

To end the thought, it made slavery worse since they were able to process the picked cotton faster.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

racist ass field trip

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

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[–] pete_the_cat 4 points 1 year ago

Eli Whitney has entered the chat

[–] TheLordHumungus 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

DEATH TO ABOMINABLE INTELLIGENCE!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Destroy the Heretek whomst wishes them upon us!

[–] RememberTheApollo_ 14 points 1 year ago

“Mistakes”?

Was it ever designed to attempt to tell the difference? Aren’t most packing “robots” just machines a basic set of sequences with maybe a sensor or two for the most egregious problems, like “there’s something here, do thing” vs “nothing here, don’t begin sequence”

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Malfunctioning sensor system blamed for technician's death at Korean food plant.

[–] Beefytootz 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

now we know the bite of 87 was spicy, how does this tie in with everything else?

[–] Uglyhead 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Gah dammit, and that movie was actually pretty decent too. Cereal Killer came through Thir13en Ghosts style.

[–] Beefytootz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

C'mon bud, tag your spoilers lol

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[–] BeefPiano 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] LowtierComputer 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wow. Robert Williams' death was a very interesting one legally. I wonder if Ford would have gotten away Scott free of they weren't such a huge manufacturer in the area.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

What I don't understand is why the grip claw needed to be applying enough strength to crush a human torso and skull, or even be able to close far enough to cause damage to a person to do its job

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