Korean Man Crushed to Death By Robot

[toucana]

A Korean robotics engineer has been crushed to death by a robot at a food packaging plant in South Korea while checking out reports of a malfunctioning sensor system.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-67354709

Acoording to the South Korean news agency Yonhap 연합뉴스, the robot which mistook him for a box of vegetables grabbed him, and then pushed his body against a conveyor belt, crushing his face and chest.

The robot which had been newly installed in a pepper sorting plant in the Donggoseong Export Agricultural Complex in South Gyeongsang province was designed to lift boxes of peppers onto pallets. An initial test run scheduled for 6 November had been delayed because of a fault ticket on the sensor system of the robotic arm.

Apart from the rather weird Darwin Award nature of this unfortunate engineer’s untimely demise, it does raise the question of how exactly are you supposed to troubleshoot an unreliable sensor system, when it is a safety critical element of a powerful industrial robot ?

[TheVat]

If the robot draws electrical power from a line, and the plant has a load center with circuit breakers, could one flip the relevant breaker and then isolate the faulty sensor system in some way so it can be taken to a workbench and analyzed?  Maybe I've seen too many  movies where they just shut off the robot and then remove the faulty element.

[toucana]

2 hours ago, TheVat said:

If the robot draws electrical power from a line, and the plant has a load center with circuit breakers, could one flip the relevant breaker and then isolate the faulty sensor system in some way so it can be taken to a workbench and analyzed?  Maybe I've seen too many  movies where they just shut off the robot and then remove the faulty element.

I found myself wondering quite what sort of robotic sensor you would use to reliably distinguish between a human being and a box of vegetables ? The best candidate I can think of is a FLIR (Forward Looking Infra-Red) camera. Hand-held versions of these are quite widely used nowadays in electronics troubleshooting where a short-circuit caused by a faulty component is suspected.

Rather than wade through acres of circuit diagrams, or laboriously test many dozens of  microscopic components, the quick method used in repair shops is to apply a voltage injection tool to a rail in the vicinity of the suspected problem, and then use a small FLIR camera to monitor the circuit board, and see which area develops a hot-spot. Modern FLIR cameras are astonishingly good and would instantly distinguish between the body heat of a human being, and a cold crate of peppers. The problem is that they need to be calibrated carefully beforehand to obtain optimum results - and that I suspect was the problem here.

[mistermack]

You could just kit it out with an Alexa, and train it to stop on the word "stop". The hard part would be to train the staff to never say stop within earshot. 

[John Cuthber]

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

You could just kit it out with an Alexa, and train it to stop on the word "stop". The hard part would be to train the staff to never say stop within earshot. 

If you didn't allow any people near the robot, you wouldn't need to worry about them saying "stop".
A policy which may have other benefits...

1 hour ago, toucana said:

I found myself wondering quite what sort of robotic sensor you would use to reliably distinguish between a human being and a box of vegetables ? The best candidate I can think of is a FLIR (Forward Looking Infra-Red) camera.

In this situation, you could use a passive IR sensor like they use in burglar alarms.
If there is a person in the room, you shut down the robot.

[toucana]

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

You could just kit it out with an Alexa, and train it to stop on the word "stop". The hard part would be to train the staff to never say stop within earshot. 

You'd probably want to program Alexa to respond to  멈추다 !  (meomchuda) if it's in a Korean factory - but yes :-)

The PIR solution would also work. I've used something similar in a stage show where we had big class IV lasers installed as part of a large digital mirror light-show projection onto a giant cyclorama screen. The PIR safety line across the front of the stage was armed before we admitted the public, and it was rigged to cut the power to the lasers instantly if anyone crossed the PIR line onto stage.

Edited November 8, 2023 by toucana
fixed typo 'meomchuda'