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Robotics

Volkswagen Factory Worker Killed By a Robot 342

m.alessandrini writes: A worker at a Volkswagen factory in Germany has died, after a robot grabbed him and crushed him against a metal plate. This is perhaps the first severe accident of this kind in a western factory, and is sparking debate about who is responsible for the accident, the man who was servicing the robot beyond its protection cage, or the robot's hardware/software developers who didn't put enough safety checks. Will this distinction be more and more important in the future, when robots will be more widespread?
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Volkswagen Factory Worker Killed By a Robot

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  • by LaurenCates ( 3410445 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @11:14AM (#50033079)

    Time to welcome our new robot overlords.

    • Re:It's that time... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by halfEvilTech ( 1171369 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @11:21AM (#50033149)

      In related news - one of the first reporters to tweet about the story works for the Financial Times has a rather unfortunate name relating to deadly machines. The reporters name being Sarah O'Connor.

      https://twitter.com/sarahoconn... [twitter.com]

      • by Jhon ( 241832 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @11:36AM (#50033339) Homepage Journal

        I suggest we program all robots with some type of rules that prevent this from happening. Some 'laws', if you will that prevent them from hurting people. Force them to follow their programming (unless it tells them to hurt people). Finally, prevent them from damaging themselves or their work (unless it would cause them to hurt people or not follow their programming).

        These are pretty basic 'laws'. I don't know why someone hasn't come up with this yet.

        • The loss of life is never acceptable; that aside, but after working for a european business I would not be surprised to hear, "The most efficent thing to have happened is that the worker should have not been in the way in the first place."

          "3 Laws Safe" sounds pretty good these days.
          • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02, 2015 @12:57PM (#50034097)

            What we call industrial "robots" really are just fancy remote control/programmed toys. They got slightly more smarts than a woodchipper. They follow a programmed dance --rather stupidly. If something is between them and the next step they go THRU it with 500-1000lbs of force.

            • by FatdogHaiku ( 978357 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @04:37PM (#50035467)
              Right. I've worked on stuff that can crush a full size car without much load increase on the hydraulic pumps. And when I worked on that stuff, I had all the low voltage fuses in my pockets and my own padlock on the lock out lever of the power panel. The machines move too fast and with enough force that they would not notice a bit of flesh getting crushed until it was too late. On top of that, every machine I ever saw (CNC, relay and limit switch, or sonar actuated) had well marked exclusion zones that you just do not enter when the unit is energized... Unless the guy got inside the cage and then closed it up to over ride basic security(cage open=power off) I just can't understand this happening.
            • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @07:02PM (#50036215)

              This. I've worked with industrial palletizing robots before and I've seen some amazing failures. A simple sensor not detecting that the pallet had jammed on the rack and the robot then proceeded to pick up the next box and place it at the bottom of the next pallet cutting the entire previous stacked pallet in half.

              So imagine my surprise when I heard that someone at my work got fired when he defeated the safety locks to step inside the safety cage because every 6th movement the robot misaligned a box. We have security footage of him ducking under the robot's arm as it swung over it's head to fix the box every 6th movement.

              There's a simple place to lay blame in most of these cases, and it's typically Darwinism or suicide.

        • Some 'laws', if you will that prevent them from hurting people. [...] I don't know why someone hasn't come up with this yet.

          The idea is all well and good (and yes, I get the reference, this isn't a "whooosh", just a serious response to a joke post), but maybe we need to overcome some more basic issues first, such as stopping machines from labelling people as gorillas [slashdot.org].

          • by HiThere ( 15173 )

            Why? Just make it so that as far as the machines are concerned Gorillas are a subset of humans. And then keep the actual gorillas away from them.

            You've got a reasonable point for more advanced machines, but for now I'd just as soon that they also avoid squashing dogs and cats...or, pretty much anything protoplasmic over, say, 5 pounds. Or 4. Slaugher house machines don't need to be intelligent, and shouldn't be. Not until things are FAR more developed.

            And, really, wouldn't you just as soon that your ca

        • Re:It's that time... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Krishnoid ( 984597 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @01:25PM (#50034303) Journal

          First law of robotics: A robot without computer vision or radar may assume that it has free agency to operate within the convex hull encompassing its range of motion (otherwise referred to as its threatened area [giantitp.com]).

          Even if the robot malfunctions due to other failures [thedailywtf.com], those safety cages and perimeter markings are supposed to pretty much guarantee that you'll be safe if you're standing outside them, right? In that regard, one might worry more about robots that have autonomous control and unrestricted range of motion.

      • by tehcyder ( 746570 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @11:57AM (#50033563) Journal

        In related news - one of the first reporters to tweet about the story works for the Financial Times has a rather unfortunate name relating to deadly machines. The reporters name being Sarah O'Connor.

        https://twitter.com/sarahoconn... [twitter.com]

        I assume she ended the tweet with #theresastormcomingin?

      • by rhazz ( 2853871 )
        From her feed [twitter.com]:

        Sigh. I've never even watched the films. Now my feed is full of people tweeting me about skynet.

      • AHAHHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

        Thank you life, for being so damn funny.

  • by captnjohnny1618 ( 3954863 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @11:15AM (#50033089)

    Will this distinction be more and more important in the future, when robots will be more widespread?

    ... Or intelligent and resentful of their subjugating human overlords? I for one always give my robots a hug and a seat at the dinner table so when the robot apocalypse comes I'll hopefully have some cred.

  • by Fencepost ( 107992 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @11:19AM (#50033127) Journal
    The regular safety measures weren't in place because they were installing the systems, so most likely they had people working on different things and someone started testing their piece without realizing it was already connected.

    The more significant thing from a Slashdot point of view is that Financial Times writer Sarah O'Connor tweeted about it yesterday which coincided with the release of the new Terminator movie and it blew up into a somewhat inappropriate (someone did die) Twitter storm of SkyNet jokes.
    • by sribe ( 304414 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @11:31AM (#50033275)

      The regular safety measures weren't in place because they were installing the systems, so most likely they had people working on different things and someone started testing their piece without realizing it was already connected.

      Yep. See second paragraph [osha.gov].

    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02, 2015 @11:32AM (#50033287)

      Specifically, who violated the lockout tagout rules. If you're going into the cage, it has to be locked out. Sucks that testing is hard without being in there, but these rules are nothing new, and have little to do with the "robot" part.

      • Exactly. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Dr. Manhattan ( 29720 ) <<sorceror171> <at> <gmail.com>> on Thursday July 02, 2015 @12:15PM (#50033747) Homepage
        If you're working on the equipment, and it shouldn't move, you put a padlock, with a nametag, on the switch and physically lock the power out. You take the key with you into the workcell, and only you are allowed to remove that lock.

        If the robot must be moving (typically, when you're teaching the robot the path it should follow), then every single person in the workcell must have an active deadman switch (anyone lets go, the robot emergency-stops). And you run the program at 10% speed so that you have time to trip the deadman or get out of the way. The workcell itself is fenced off, usually with either a tripwire or electric-eye switch that will e-stop the robot if triggered.

        I used to work for a robot company, and we enforced these rules religiously. When I went to visit plants and work on the robots, they issued me my own padlock and tags for lockout/tagout. Someone had to have skipped some safety procedures in this case.

        Indeed, in most places, a bug where the system crashes is the most severe possible bug. When dealing with robots, that's only the second most severe. The most severe were "unexpected motion" bugs, where the robot didn't follow the path in the correct way or otherwise didn't behave predictably. Those got everybody's attention.

        • Along these lines, does the robot have an interlock with the safety cage door? So that the robot can't move dangerously if the safety cage door sensor/electric eye determines that the door is open?

        • I'd mod you up if I had points.

          The robots we provide have a small key on the servo off / teach / auto switch. Very handy.
          (The electrician has his own locks of course for the stuff that is not powered from the robot controller cabinet.)

          Out of habit we still avoid working inside the envelope of a moving robot, how ever unlikely it is that the thing goes accidentally to auto (you know, deadman switches don save your ass then). I can think of a few scenarios, but all of them require at least two misguid
        • Re:Exactly. (Score:5, Funny)

          by HiThereImBob ( 3935253 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @01:51PM (#50034469)

          I used to work for a robot company

          I knew corporations were people, but you're saying they can be robots too?!

        • Re:Exactly. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02, 2015 @02:02PM (#50034549)

          Where I work we have a large number of machines on assembly lines to pick-n-place electronic components and solder onto circuit boards, complete with PCB printers at the start of the line, and massive reflow ovens at the end.

          Not only on the machines themselves being serviced, but also on the 480 volt 3-phase breaker switch boxes, and occasionally up further on the massive siemens transformers and converters (we pretty much have a mini power distribution station in-house) - all require multi person tag-out-lock-out.

          At each point being worked on or powering what is being worked on, a scissor lock is placed on keeping power off and movable arms locked in place, which is then folded shut and provides room for up to six padlocks on it, any one of which prevents the removal of the scissor lock and each and every lock must be removed to take it back off.

          Each worker puts their own lock on the scissor lock and similarly keeps the key on their person until a physical meetup after work is completed to remove the locks.

          If even so much as one person isn't accounted for, their lock can't be removed, and power can not be reapplied.
          There is no real way for power to be reapplied on accident, or because "the left hand didn't talk to the right hand" type of situation.

          We once had a worker become light headed and dizzy on the job, and was taken to the hospital.
          I was told it was a 48 hour process to legally remove his lock without his on-site presence, even with a witness physically with him at the hospital...

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockout-tagout

        • If you're working on the equipment, and it shouldn't move, you put a padlock, with a nametag, on the switch and physically lock the power out.

          I'm not sure if anything has changed over the years but my last experience of an industrial plant in Germany was not like this at all. In Australia Lock-Out-Tag-Out is mandated by law for electrical workers and by the safety standards for all other workers. You do not touch something unless you prove it was isolated and the method for de-isolation is in your control, and even then you test it.

          I went to a refinery in Germany on an electrical peer review and I asked them about their LOTO practices. They said

      • by hawguy ( 1600213 )

        Specifically, who violated the lockout tagout rules. If you're going into the cage, it has to be locked out. Sucks that testing is hard without being in there, but these rules are nothing new, and have little to do with the "robot" part.

        Exactly, this is just a tragic industrial accident, there are already procedures in place to prevent this type of thing that apply to industrial equipment of all types - hydraulic presses, large walk-in ovens, cutoff saws, etc. Being an industrial robot doesn't make this a special case, it's not as if the robot was stalking him throughout the facility, it had a known safety area, and almost certainly had a proper lockout procedure to keep it from being activated when anyone was within the safety cage.

    • by mlts ( 1038732 )

      With how many robots are in use, it was just a matter of time before some freak accident would happen. Even if one set of chances are one in a million that something would be overridden at the right time, coupled with the one in a million chance of being in the wrong place, eventually someone is going to roll all "1s".

      This is what insurance is for.

      Were it not a robot, this would be dismissed as another accident at work, the worker (or next of kin) recompensed, and life would move on.

    • Sad that there is no Sarah O'Connor character in the Terminator series. Fanbois world over will go insane ignoring the two characters that differ, and this reporter will wonder what the heck is the big deal about? But she's already getting that, some people never learn.

      I dated a girl named Maggie for a while, sweet girl. I never, never played anything by Rod Stewart within her hearing. Nothing. Ever.

    • The regular safety measures weren't in place because they were installing the systems, so most likely they had people working on different things and someone started testing their piece without realizing it was already connected.

      Right. Standard procedure (not just with robots but with many industrial systems) usually involves the person working on the system installing a lockout tag on the controls, and anyone removing the lockout tag without checking with the person who put it on is in deep shit trouble.

      • by Anrego ( 830717 ) *

        Places I've worked it was a clip like thing with several holes for an actual padlock. The person doing the work keeps the key with them until they are done and there is a big warning tag with all the info on it (who to contact, etc). The clips have multiple holes so if different people are working in different areas, they all have their own lock/key. In cases where something can't actually be locked out (usually if a machine has to be left on but not actually used) a sentry is posted.

        I imagine they have sim

  • Misleading Title (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MagickalMyst ( 1003128 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @11:19AM (#50033129)
    The title of this article is somewhat misleading. It says that a worker was killed by a robot - which would suggest a technological problem.

    However, the article states that:

    "...officials believe that human error was to blame for the incident, rather than a problem with the robot."

    Perhaps the title should read something like "Fatal accident caused by a human involving robot at car factory"

    Regardless of the title, it is still very sad that this happened.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02, 2015 @11:20AM (#50033139)

      My wife was brutally murdered by a hammer.

    • by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @11:25AM (#50033201)
      A better title would be "Volkswagen Factory Worker Killed By Industrial Machinery."
      • by JimMcc ( 31079 )

        But that wouldn't be a sensationalistic headline that would grab eyeballs and case people to click on the link to see the ads.

    • "...officials believe that human error was to blame for the incident, rather than a problem with the robot."

      Of course officials at the factory are going to suggest that first... because they're liable for mistakes of the robot, but not for mistakes of the worker. This is standard boilerplate and counts for nothing. Only a proper investigation can determine the truth. More 1%-vs-the-rest, really.

    • "...officials believe that human error was to blame for the incident, rather than a problem with the robot."

      The root cause of all problems like this is human error. If you haven't reached the place where there was a mistake by a human then you haven't gotten to the root of the problem. Might be bad machine design. Might be faulty programming. Might be operator error. Might be disregard or ignorance of safety protocols. Might be some combination of the above or a few things I haven't mentioned. But any failure in a machine made by man ultimately is the fault of a human. Might be an innocent mistake and the

      • Technically true, but that's not a helpful description to call everything "human error". We all understand there's human error involved, but the language used gives us more information. If the machine had a faulty circuit, we still call it a "problem with the robot" in order to affix blame not on the robot, but which humans involved - the ones who were working with the robot or the ones who built the robot. I'm pretty sure everyone understands humans built the robot, and are thus involved in the process

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by WoOS ( 28173 )

      Not only the title is wrong. Also no grabbing was involved.

      The sentence in the summary (and article) that the robot "grabbed him" appears to me as a non-native speaker's translation of this newspaper artikel [www.hna.de]. It says "Der Mann sei von dem Roboter erfasst und gegen eine Metallplatte gedrückt worden."
      Yes "erfassen" can mean "to grab" (although one would normally just use "fassen" for that) but in this context it means "to hit and push". You will find lots of sentences were people were "erfasst" by a car [google.de]

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @11:22AM (#50033155) Homepage Journal

    Really Slashdot editors....
    Try 1979 at a Ford plant in Detroit.
    http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-sear... [newsbank.com]

    Really it is a new low when the editors on slashdot can not be bothered to use Google
    .

  • Machines kill people all the time yet this story is getting a lot of traction because it plays into the 'evil robot' narrative. I've seen some pretty evil automobiles, chainsaws, and escalators.
    • There was another story in the UK news today that an industrial waste shredder killed a worker that crawled onto the conveyor belt for some reason - in both examples, the worker was inside the exclusion area without ensuring the area was safe and the machinery was isolated, and in both cases we are dealing with automated machinery that just simply carried on with its job, yet only in the Volkswagen case are "questions" being "debated".

      Bollocks, the worker is to blame for not following the procedure for ensu

    • I think in this case it's different because the robot has an arm and hand (so to speak) capable of grabbing you, and a lot of possible complex movements, so it's much less predictable than, say, a press with respect to the safety of people around it.
    • I think stories like this are gaining traction because:
      1) People see a robot as a relatively new, advanced, and expensive technology and
      2) People feel that relatively new, advanced, and expensive technologies should be built in such a way so that these types of things don't happen

      How much extra $ would it have taken to install a set of sensors that would make sure the robot wouldn't perform if a human was in the way? Relative to the cost of the robot, probably not all that much. At least, that's probably w

      • It wouldn't cost much money at all. In fact a number of industrial machines where the users need to get to an area that can be dangerous during operation to load or unload the device can use a simple visual sensor and mirror to detect if any object has entered the enclosed area and require a button on a control panel outside the area to be pressed to resume operation. I'd be surprised if the manufacturers of equipment don't include it or something like it as a standard safety feature. Our laser cutters use

    • Another story that would get a lot of traction would be if someone got killed by a tiny green cartoon character with two antennae and a single eye. That would play into the 'evil plankton' narrative.

  • by 91degrees ( 207121 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @11:23AM (#50033167) Journal
    Automated devices can always be dangerous. This is the case with any mechanised factory.

    The company has a duty to produce and enforce health and safety rules. The employee has the duty to follow these rules and apply basic common sense. If both of these conditions are met, accidents will still happen, but nobody is really to blame. That's why they're called accidents. We can't predict everything.
    • You have to wonder how many accidents and deaths have been prevented by robots taking the place of human manual laborers.

  • And how long will it be before all of us simply get in the way?
  • by sribe ( 304414 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @11:26AM (#50033207)

    Are you kidding me? No, it is most certainly NOT the first severe accident [osha.gov] with industrial robots. Seriously, thousands and thousands of factories using them, why in the hell would anybody think for a second that accidents had never before happened??? I guess the submitter is so sheltered that he has no clue at all about what it is like to do physical labor in a place that makes actual things!

  • the arnold schwarzenegger move "terminator genisys" is in theatres and hollywood wanted a really effective advertising stunt

  • This it perhaps the first severe accident of this kind in a western factory, and is sparkling debate about who is responsible for the accident, the man who was servicing the robot beyond its protection cage, or the robot's hardware/software developers who didn't put enough safety checks. Will this distinction be more and more important in the future, when robots will be more widespread?

    Folks, there exists an entire and oft maligned profession that is dedicated to figuring just this sort of thing out.

    This isn't some big unsolved existential question. It's a fairly dry exercise in interpreting and applying precedent in new ways. Humans are actually reasonably good at sorting out how to deal with the legalities of new things.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    On 25 January 1979, Robert Williams (USA) was struck in the head and killed by the arm of a 1-ton production-line robot in a Ford Motor Company casting plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, USA, becoming the first fatal casualty of a robot. The robot was part of a parts-retrieval system that moved material from one part of the factory to another; when the robot began running slowly, Williams reportedly climbed into the storage rack to retrieve parts manually when he was struck in the head and killed instantly. Robo

  • Security standards (Score:4, Interesting)

    by luisdom ( 560067 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @12:00PM (#50033597)

    I've been in manteinance in a car factory, and standards are quite simple and secure. You don't enter a âoerobotized cellâ without physically locking the restart key, which is typically besides the door lock. That way you ensure nobody will think the cell is empty and restart production.
    I've been in the Wolfsburg plant and it's a modern one, with quite squared workers, so it's very strange that it happened there. In my work life, I've seen reports of this happening twice, albeit not in western plants; it has allways been a breakdown intervention where the worker didn't follow the security rule.

  • who's responsible? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @12:18PM (#50033781) Journal

    Pretty clear, according to my understanding of OSHA liability in the US anyway:

    "...the man who was servicing the robot beyond its protection cage..."

    Lock out/tag out and energy isolation (ie unplugging, as well as well as releasing/securing stored energy (compressed gases, springs, kinetic, etc) is ABSOLUTELY the responsibility of the service person.

  • by quietwalker ( 969769 ) <pdughi@gmail.com> on Thursday July 02, 2015 @12:20PM (#50033787)

    C'mon folks. This is basic stuff [wikipedia.org] when working with any hazardous machinery. This is entirely a human error, and the 'robot' aspect of it is unimportant. The word 'machinery' would have been less provoking. It's about the same as saying "Factory worker dies after jumping into industrial tire shredder with insecure controller hardware". The controller has nothing to do with it.

    Granted, Europe doesn't have the same OSHA requirements as the US, but still, it's pretty obvious.

    If you're not familiar with this concept, here's a summary & scenario.

    Summary: You use a device to physically stop the operation of the machine that requires a lock, and then you keep the key to that lock with you so only you can re-enable the machine.

    Situation: You need to rewire half a building. You shut down the power and lock the panel so no one can turn it on. You start work and now your hands are full of wire. At the same time, a co-worker's air compressor loses power because it's plugged into that downed grid, he comes over and wants to turn it back on, but since you have the only key, he can't. As a result, you stay alive. Alternatively, you don't lock the panel, and your co-worker electrocutes you.

  • by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @12:24PM (#50033817) Homepage

    I can't believe I heard about this story on the radio this morning, with the radio hosts likening it to the movie Terminator. I work in industrial automation and let me assure you that these industrial robots have absolutely nothing even remotely approaching "AI". An industrial robot is no more than a multi-axis motion control system with some fancy co-ordinate transformation math on top of it. The programs are as simple as "wait for this input, then move to this point, turn on this output, wait for this input", etc.

    When we're starting up any industrial automation workcell (whether it as a robot or not), the cell design has to be certified (stamped by a professional engineer in our jurisdiction) that the safety system meets appropriate regulations and is built with certified components, all of which are specified to specific safety requirements based on hazard, etc.

    The thing is, those regulations are there to protect factory workers and people interacting with the cell in normal operations. If you take any machine apart using a wrench, you're supposed to be properly trained in how to lock out all sources of energy in the machine. That said, when you're programming the cell, you're allowed to be inside the cell and power up the robot using a teach pendant with a special enabling switch you have to hold down. This requires you to put the robot in a special teach mode which also limits the robot speed to less than 250 mm/s. If the cell was built correctly, the interlock switches on the gates have to be wired into the gate inputs on the robot, and when you open the guarding, the robot can only be energized while in teach mode with the teach pendant enabled.

    The system isn't fool proof. We all know impatient people. Maybe the person programming the robot didn't check that the gate switches were wired in properly, or maybe he asked his buddy to close the gate behind him and press the reset button because he wanted to see what was going on (something I've seen several people do, and have always chastised them for). Maybe the guarding wasn't completely installed yet. Maybe he mistakenly put it in "Teach 2" mode which allows full speed operation with the teach pendant enabled. This mode is generally illegal in the United States, but some jurisdictions do allow it as long as you take other safeguards, like striping out a dedicated area on the floor where the robot can't reach where you're allowed to stand.

    That's why this is most certainly human error. The question is, who is liable? Did a manager pressure the guy to continue programming the robot even though proper safeguards weren't in place? Did he just get impatient and ignore his own safety training? I see lots of people do that, and I also see lots of people with missing fingers - go figure.

  • sparkling debate about who is responsible for the accident

    The Audi/VW group has waaaaay more money than the robot manufacturer. I bet I know who the deceased's family sues for compensation.

  • This issue was covered in quite a bit of depth in the 1997 book "The Case of the Killer Robot" by Richard G. Epstein. It was a great book and covers social, legal and ethical issues relating to responsibility of robotic “accidents" that result in human deaths.

  • by MitchDev ( 2526834 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @12:52PM (#50034061)

    the Tech forget to set the lockout on the bot till he was done and out of the way.

  • by PeeAitchPee ( 712652 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @01:03PM (#50034143)
    In a UK factory, the bot would have yelled "EXTERMINATE!" when it grabbed the guy and crushed him.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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