Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him — Malfunctioning sensor system blamed for technician’s death at Korean food plant
Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him — Malfunctioning sensor system blamed for technician’s death at Korean food plant

Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him

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
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.
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.
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.
He was a technician from the robot manufacturer, so it's on them for not having a proper procedure for maintaining sensors while the motors are disabled. I can't imagine working on an industrial robot while the motors are powered... That's completely reckless.
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.
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.
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.
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.