The Question of Robot Safety

An anonymous reader writes to mention an Economist article wondering how safe should robots be? From the article: "In 1981 Kenji Urada, a 37-year-old Japanese factory worker, climbed over a safety fence at a Kawasaki plant to carry out some maintenance work on a robot. In his haste, he failed to switch the robot off properly. Unable to sense him, the robot's powerful hydraulic arm kept on working and accidentally pushed the engineer into a grinding machine. His death made Urada the first recorded victim to die at the hands of a robot. This gruesome industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behavior was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction writer." The article goes on to explore the ethics behind robot soldiers, the liability issues of cleaning droids, and the moral problems posed by sexbots.

Comments

Virtual bots

[WinEveryGame]

The story curiously doesn't dwell much on virtual bots and issues posed by them. It focuses entirely on mechanical bots.

Re:Virtual bots

[ThePengwin]

In the world of literature it dosent matter what things are, so long as they can sound real.
Besides, many people would have died in a similar way to that.

I have read about robots for ages and i think that the three laws are a load of crap. We dont even live in a world where robots can think for themselves yet, let alone be able to kill someone because they wanted to. I dont even see the point of making a robot that is aware of its existance, There is no real reason to do so.

Re:Virtual bots

[Bin_jammin]

I don't want a robot that can think for itself, I want a robot that can think for ME.

Re:Virtual bots

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I have read about robots for ages and i think that the three laws are a load of crap.

That's the whole point: the three simple rules that Asimov proposes have complex implications - his robot stories are filled with situations where following the laws results in tragedy. So yeah, they're a load of crap, but they're intended to be crap.

I fail to see how that was the robot's fault

[eericson]

"This gruesome industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behavior was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction writer"

Neither would this have happened if the maintenance tech had followed procedure and just switched the damned thing off. I don't see how this is any different from a normal industrial accident with something like a sheet metal press.

Re:I fail to see how that was the robot's fault

[ozmanjusri]

I don't see how this is any different from a normal industrial accident with something like a sheet metal press.

It isn't, and the robot in question had less automated safety features than your average modern metal press.

There's no need to invoke Asimov's laws for something which has less AI than an automatic door. Even a few sensors linked to a cutout switch could have prevented the accident. Something like this: http://gsfctechnology.gsfc.nasa.gov/FeaturedRobot. html could even have prevented the accident and allowed the robot to continue working.

Re:I fail to see how that was the robot's fault

[hazem]

Agreed. If they can make a circular saw that can stop dead the moment it touches human flesh (resulting in a possible scratch rather than a severed finger), then i'm sure they can put some better safety features into robots.

But you're forgetting how clever idiots can be.

I used to work in a print shop. I had a large machine for cutting stacks of paper. You have to manually move the paper around under the blades to get it where you want. BUT, to activate the blade and do the cutting, you had to push in two different switches that were a couple feet apart. The idea was that you had to use both hands to activate the blade - and thus, both hands would be away from blade when it cut. It even had spacers that kept you from leaning against the switch.

Well, one idiot I worked with would tape down one of the switches so he could operate the blade with one hand while moving the paper with the other. Sure enough, he lost a finger. Even stupider, he continued to tape one of the switches down.

You just can't engineer aound stupidity like that.

Operator Error

[romanval]

The robot didn't actively kill him; it just wasn't programmed to know whether a person is there or not. It's like stepping into a giant blender without turning it off. There's isn't much morality to worry about.

Christ, not again.

[rk]

Whenever robots come out, why do people trot out Asimov's Laws of Robotics like they're holy writ? He created those laws and then wrote a book's worth of short stories (read: FICTION) showing their pitfalls.

For anyone who thinks they're a great idea, I'd also like to see your working prototype code and design docs.

What moral issue

[JanneM]

What's the moral issue with sex robots? It would be just another sex toy. Has there ever been a technology some inventive human has not adapted for self-gratification?

I'd venture that it would in fact not even be all that good as a sex toy; it would be limited to being human-like, with human-like capabilities, unlike the classical simple, cheap, but far more versatile toys sold today.

It's science fiction

[hcg50a]

This gruesome industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behavior was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction writer.

The machine that accidentally killed the person is not capable of following the 3 laws of robotics. It was like a train hitting somone on the tracks -- someone in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The three laws require sophisticated sensors and very sophisticated processing, the likes of which I have not seen in any computer yet.

These Aren't Asmovian Robots

[IronicCheese]

To adhere to Asimov's rules of robotics requires that the robot be capable of executing those instructions, and we're nowhere near having machines with the Artifical Intelligence necessary to do that.

Manufacturing robots are sophisticated, but they're really more properly thought of as "Automatons" in this context, not robots in the Asmovian sense.

Tragic that this fellow died, but no more of a failing than a farmhand who falls into a thresher.

It does suggest that these industrial machines might have more safeties on them than they currently do, though.

Self Awareness.

[camperdave]

Robots already have a degree of self awareness. Position sensors, battery charge monitors, etc are all designed to let a robot know about itself in relation to the world. As we develop more sophisticated robots, they will require a greater degree of self awareness. Right now, industrial robots are basically programmed at the "goto position x1,y1,z1; close gripper; goto position x2,y2,z2; release gripper;" level. If you want them to work at the "Pick up part X from conveyor belt; dip part in solvent tank;" level, the robot is going to have to be able to coordinate vision and arm motion. In other words it will have to have a greater degree of self awareness. When you get into higher level stuff (same robot, multiple tasks) the robot will have to keep track of which tool it has, what loads it is capable of manipulating, etc.

In short, the more self aware the robot, the higher the level of abstraction you get in assigning tasks to it.

Re:Self Awareness.

[danaris]

I think you're misunderstanding just what "self-awareness" means. It's not just "awareness of certain properties of the body"--it's "awareness of the self as distinct from the rest of the world." What you're describing is simply environmental awareness--which is necessary for a robot capable of following the high-level instructions like the ones you mentioned, but is worlds away from true self-awareness.

Dan Aris