Rage From the Machine: Robot Attacks Swedish Industrial Worker

O SNAP

hahaha what a dope. unplug it first.. then repair. it was prolly just doin what it was programed to do. grab rock.. put else where. prolly thought his big silly head was a rock. well.. born stupid, die stupid i guess.

This isn't funny. 85% of the workers that die in industry are skilled tradesman. 90% of those people die due to lockout violations. VERIFY VERIFY VERIFY. That man has a family and they expected him to come home whole from his job that day. My first reaction to the article is a little shock that you think this is funny then it makes me VERY ANGRY. I've watched families bury 4 people that i've worked with in the foundry over the last 12 years. 3 of those people would still be here if they and the company were more vigilant about ensuring that the equipment they were working on was at a zero energy state. Lockout is generally not as easy as "unplugging" an item. Stuff sits with the power on waiting for a command from another system before starting. This makes training terribly important. Sometimes extra tradesman or engineers are required to come to the job to be sure that all the power sources are off before entering the area of a robot.

This situation is neither funny or simple. What it is is tragic. I think popsci should consider removing and rewriting this article about the hazards of working in industry and how complicated jobs have become that went to the lowest educated people a 100 years ago.

When you read this article please take a moment and think of his family members receiving a phone call in the middle of his shift asking that they rush to the hospital because their family member was there dieing.

In reference to the comment by "foundryrat": Did you know that 95% statistics can be made to say what you want... 50% of the time, especially on a full moons or leap years.

As for the article, welcome to the Darwin club good sir, and thanks for unleashing Skynet.

you are a dickhead troll.

Now, let me see if I have this straight.

A worker gets hurt servicing a machine - this is comedy.
A rioter gets hurt by police - this is a tragedy?

Regardless of whether this is a 'Darwinian Incident' or 'Company Negligence', there is a person, another person's parent/sibling/child that was nearly killed. This incident needs a lot less flippancy in its reporting.

Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgement.

Robot-1
Idiot-0

Maybe they should have had a robot fix the robot if people are so flawed... why should we work at all?

Attn: foundryrat

As a fellow skilled laborer (mechanic/welder/equipment operator/etc.) I am fully aware of the pitfalls involved in the day-to-day operations surrounding the use of large/powerful equipment. While I agree that the loss of life/limb is nothing less than tragic, I must say that it has been my experience that virtually every time someone has been injured or killed on the job it has inevitably been the responsibility of the individual him/her self.

At some point during the days operations, this indvidual has made the decision to continue working despite the overwhelming threat of injury/death. While I do not condone this behavior, I must, in all honesty, admit that I have been guilty of this bad judgement myself from time to time, and on several occasions it was by nothing less than the grace of God that I escaped with relatively minor injury. On multiple other occasions, I have received injury by the fault of a co-worker. At this point in my life I consider myself to be quite fortunate that I still have all my OEM parts.

In the long term, however, I most certainly have learned, not only from my mistakes, but from my co-workers' as well. Training and education are all well and good, but when laziness or an arrogant supervisor/manager/director enter the equation the only possible end result is tragedy.

It all comes down to the individuals responsibility to make an intelligent decision to protect him/her self from harm by refusing to work in an obviously unacceptably unsafe condition. Accepting the unsafe is, well, unacceptable, and, quite frankly, people who willing put themselves at unnecessary risk are pretty much getting what they ask for. I only hope that I have learned enough through the years to not go out in a mass of stupidity.

As for the rest of you yay-hoos, Darwin was wrong! It ain't survival of the fittest, it's survival of the least stupid. The two greatest gifts God gave humanity are fear and pain. Violation of these gifts results in an R.A.S. (random act of stupidity) which inevitably leads to injury/maiming/death. Consider that the next time you, yourself, are about to embark on the trail to idiotsville!

Asimov's 3 laws of Robotics are needed.

Is it to early to start discussing the ETHICAL WEB (Of which robotics are part)

Should Electronics become self regulating or should we regulate it.

Is the WEB a robot? (not in the hardware sense but component wise)

Will the web become sentient?

Which values will it adhere to?

I reckon its quite arrogant to asssume that should the web/robotics become sentient it will adhere to human values.

If you read the original article, you'll see that the worker had four broken *ribs*, not four broken *limbs*.

You'd think after specifically training to deal with heavy machinery, the man would have been smart enough to remember to actually check and then double check to power source to make sure it wasn't turned on. A robot can't distinguish between human head and rock, so the title of "robot attacks man" is quite deceiving because it's purely the man's fault.
Better be safe than sorry.