An industrial robotic crushed a employee to demise at a vegetable packing plant in South Korea

SEOUL, South Korea — An industrial robotic crushed a employee to demise at a vegetable packaging plant in South Korea, police mentioned Thursday, as they examine whether or not the machine was unsafe or had potential defects.

In accordance with police officers within the southern county of Goseong, the person died of head and chest accidents Tuesday after he was grabbed and pressed in opposition to a conveyor belt by the machine’s robotic arms. Police didn’t launch his title however mentioned the person was an worker of an organization that installs industrial robots and was despatched to the plant to look at whether or not the machine was working correctly.

The machine was one among two pick-and-place robots used on the facility that packages bell peppers and different greens exported to different Asian international locations, police mentioned. Such machines are frequent in South Korea’s agricultural communities.

“It wasn’t a complicated, synthetic intelligence-powered robotic, however a machine that merely picks up containers and places them on pallets,” mentioned Kang Jin-gi, who heads the investigations division at Gosong Police Station. He mentioned the police have been working with associated companies to find out whether or not the machine had technical defects or issues of safety.

One other police official, who didn’t need to be named as a result of he wasn’t licensed to speak to reporters, mentioned police have been additionally trying into the opportunity of human error. The robotic’s sensors are designed to determine containers, and safety digicam footage indicated the person had moved close to the robotic with a field in his fingers, which possible triggered the machine’s response, the official mentioned.

“It’s clearly not a case the place a robotic confused a human with a field – this wasn’t a really subtle machine,” he mentioned.

South Korea has had different security accidents involving industrial robots in recent times. In March, a producing robotic crushed and critically injured a employee who was inspecting the machine at an auto components manufacturing facility in Gunsan. Final yr, a robotic put in close to a conveyor belt fatally crushed a employee at a milk manufacturing facility in Pyeongtaek.