Slashdot Mirror
A Rogue Robot Is Blamed For a Human Colleague's Gruesome Death (qz.com)
A new lawsuit has emerged claiming a robot is responsible for killing a human colleague, reports Quartz. It all started in July 2015, when Wanda Holbrook, "a maintenance technician performing routine duties on an assembly line" at an auto-parts maker in Ionia, Michigan, called Ventra Ionia Main, "was 'trapped by robotic machinery' and crushed to death." From the report: On March 7, her husband, William Holbrook, filed a wrongful death complaint (pdf) in Michigan federal court, naming five North American robotics companies involved in engineering and integrating the machines and parts used at the plant: Prodomax, Flex-N-Gate, FANUC, Nachi, and Lincoln Electric. Holbrook's job involved keeping robots in working order. She routinely inspected and adjusted processes on the assembly line at Ventra, which makes bumpers and trailer hitches. One day, Holbrook was performing her regular duties when a machine acted very irregularly, according to the lawsuit reported in Courthouse News. Holbrook was in the plant's six-cell "100 section" when a robot unexpectedly activated, taking her by surprise. The cells are separated by safety doors and the robot should not have been able to move. But it somehow reached Holbrook, and was intent on loading a trailer-hitch assembly part right where she stood over a similar part in another cell. The machine loaded the hardware onto Holbrook's head. She was unable to escape, and her skull was crushed. Co-workers who eventually noticed that something seemed amiss found Holbrook dead. William Holbrook seeks an unspecified amount of damages, arguing that before her gruesome death, his wife "suffered tremendous fright, shock and conscious pain and suffering." He also names three of the defendants -- FANUC, Nachi, and Lincoln Electric -- in two additional claims of product liability and breach of implied warranty. He argues that the robots, tools, controllers, and associated parts were not properly designed, manufactured or tested, and not fit for use. "The robot from section 130 should have never entered section 140, and should have never attempted to load a hitch assembly within a fixture that was already loaded with a hitch assembly. A failure of one or more of defendants' safety systems or devices had taken place, causing Wanda's death," the lawsuit alleges.
Yes, but this was from an adjacent work station. Equivalent to unplugging your circular saw in the garage, only to be attacked by the refrigerator in the next room.
Just sayin'. Do you trust that fuel tanker truck next to you?
Yup. "By a robot" will be the new "with a computer."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Begins? This sounds exactly like the sort of issue from that start of the industrial revolution, where people were routinely mauled by machinery with inadequate safety standards. About 200 years too late for 'and so it begins'.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The machine she was working on was not the one that crushed her. This sounds more like bad industrial design, that allowed one robotic arm to reach into another work area. Either they should have been separated further, or they should have been energized through overlapping lockouts.
Indeed, and that is a completely standard approach. If the safety equipment was faulty, not present, or there was pressure to not use it, then there is a very good case. If the equipment was there, working, but not used, then there is no case at all. Machinery is always dangerous and you must never bypass safety procedures, or suffer the consequences.
Many people are stupid though. Refer, for example, to all the photos on the Internet where you see somebody operate a circular bench saw without the protection bar. Just stumble once while the thing is running....
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It isn't always possible, however.
Note this portion of the description from the summary:
routinely inspected and adjusted processes
- there are many times when the design of the machine is such that adjusting and calibrating requires the machine to be energized; and sometimes safety interlocks must be disabled (generally with vendor provided tools) in order to make those adjustments.
An injury or death (sadly more specifically the high dollar value lawsuit following it) may provide sufficient incentive for the vendor to redesign the machine to allow for routine adjustments in a safer manner.
Even though plenty of people will dismiss this as a matter of a careless worker (which it might or might not be true in the specific instance), the fact is that some jobs are dangerous but necessary. Personally, I won't take a dangerous job; but I know that a modern lifestyle requires that someone does dangerous jobs. Workers, managements and equipment vendors all must work together to minimize the number of injuries and deaths involved with doing dangerous work. Ideally robotics are able to reduce the number of workers exposed to 'dangerous but necessary' conditions; but until we have robots that are able to fully adjust and repair other robots people will be involved in this kind of work.
I think about the only possible dumb reaction to this news would be to immediately assume you know what happened.
"Old man yells at systemd"
The other thing to note is that a good solution to the robot safety problem is to simply add more automation. Mixing humans and automation requires huge effort and cost at the interface. Even if it costs a lot more than the marginal cost of labour to eliminate the last pieces of manual work on a production line, the potential savings across the wider system could make it worth doing. This is likely to mean that even those prepared to work well below minimum wage will not be able to get jobs that can be automated. In effect, the externalised costs of labour will at some point exceed the cost of automation, reducing the demand for labour to zero at a price well above zero wages.
Of course one solution to this would be to abolish health and safety laws, which I imagine will be the next step. As Milton Friedman said, the biggest discriminator against the low paid is pesky things such as minimum wages law that prevent workers offering their labour at a price that clears the market. I'm sure there is an equilibrium point for the number of worker mutilations per hour that ensure full employment - we just have to let the market find it!
It's the same fucking thing for all machinery, you fucking idiot. It doesn't matter if it is a robot or an HVAC fan.
And yet an action that it was known to be fully capable of doing under other circumstances.
It doesn't matter if it *should* do the thing at the time, what matters is whether it *can* do the thing at any time. And if the answer is yes, it should have been subject to lock out-tag out.
Agreed that a Robot is no more a colleague than a screwdriver.
I think you're wrong about Asimov, though. It's obvious that to write about theoretical concerns of future technology, the author must proceed without knowing how to actually implement the technology, but may be able to say that it's theoretically possible. There is no shortage of good, predictive science fiction written when we had no idea how to achieve the technology portrayed. For example, Clarke's orbital satellites were steam-powered. Steam is indeed an efficient way to harness solar power if you have a good way to radiate the waste heat, but we ended up using photovoltaic. But Clarke was on solid ground regarding the theoretical possibility of such things.
Bruce Perens.
I did read it and this bit puzzles me
a robot unexpectedly activated, taking her by surprise
because I can't find the bit about her relaying that information to co-workers because they "eventually noticed that something seemed amiss found Holbrook dead". So how did she say that the robot unexpectedly activated and took her by surprise? It may well be a valid assumption but without any witnesses it cannot be stated with certainty.
Bad analogy. Never trust the labeling of a breaker. Always check that the circuit is not live.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
One might infer that it took her by surprise because she failed to get out of the way before it crushed her.