zlacker

Article is missing some key details. Every industrial robot that I've seen has at least a line painted in the floor, or more often a physical barrier, and workers are required to stay behind it when the robot is powered on. Did this factory not have such basic precautions, or did the dead worker violate protocol, or did another worker turn on the robot at the wrong time?

>>nradov+(OP)
All of those are possible, but food handling usually uses less powerful robots (simply because they're a lot cheaper) so there may have been some complacency about them not being that dangerous.

(Physical barriers can be tricky to get right too, though - there have been incidents of "worker crushed between robot and inside of safety cage" though design standards have been updated in response to that.)

>>nradov+(OP)
Korean versions of the article have more details. He was from a robot maintenance company visiting the factory to perform a software update. He was working on the robot alone and checking the sensors when the incident happened.

>>yklcs+91
Hmm, that would suggest that he both had better training about the robots (compared to a random food-packing-plant worker) but was also more comfortable around them (which is a huge risk with any powerful equipment, including automobiles.)

>>nradov+(OP)
It could well have been a maintenance situation. Those tend to be extremely tricky to do safely, in spite of all the precautions, especially if you want to do some diagnostics without taking the whole thing apart.

I have religious respect for those arms, if they're powered up you couldn't pay me to get within reach.

>>eichin+A
The one this article is about is an absolute brute.

>>jacque+jl
Any idea what model? The bbc picture looked like implausible artwork (way too much expensive hardware in-frame for a "replace cheap humans with cheaper robots" scenario) but I could see them picking a low-end industrial/automotive arm instead of a "collaborative" arm...

>>eichin+S03
The BBC article picture is just filler (they should more clearly indicate it when their pictures have nothing to do with the article).

Top picture:

https://m.yna.co.kr/amp/view/AKR20231108062151052

I've been trying to figure out the brand but enough of the text on the arm is obscured that I can't make it out beyond NZ...MI or something to that effect. I'd love it if someone could figure out what make and model it is. It's a palletizing robot, it looks superficially quite a bit like the Kawasaki models but the brand name fragment clearly doesn't match that (and that would be Japanese, not South Korean).

>>jacque+wc3
Ooh, thanks for the reference. Kind of looks like https://www.zonesunpack.com/products/zonesun-industrial-arti... - that four-bar linkage for the arm segments isn't unique (as you mentioned, the big kawasaki arms use it too) but it's really not something you expect in human accessible spaces, both for pinch hazards and just catching on things...

>>jacque+wc3
Ah, found nachirobotics with a matching logo (in a video about a refrigeration factory modernizing their automation, but it was on a welding robot there.)

So, maybe one of https://www.nachirobotics.com/product/lp180/ (or a similar model, they have half a dozen in the "kawasaki cp180 knockoff" scale...)

>>eichin+Cl7
Yes, you've found the brand, thank you! I thought I new most of these by now but this one threw me.

That thing has 3 meters of reach, so a dome with a 3 meter radius would be within reach of the arm at maximum extension. You might feel quite safe with the arm retracted or pointing away from you but all it would take is a limit switch that is busted for it to be able to reach you.

You couldn't pay me to get near one of these with the power on.