The Question of Robot Safety 482
An anonymous reader writes to mention an Economist article wondering how safe should robots be? From the article: "In 1981 Kenji Urada, a 37-year-old Japanese factory worker, climbed over a safety fence at a Kawasaki plant to carry out some maintenance work on a robot. In his haste, he failed to switch the robot off properly. Unable to sense him, the robot's powerful hydraulic arm kept on working and accidentally pushed the engineer into a grinding machine. His death made Urada the first recorded victim to die at the hands of a robot. This gruesome industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behavior was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction writer." The article goes on to explore the ethics behind robot soldiers, the liability issues of cleaning droids, and the moral problems posed by sexbots.
Good department (Score:2, Informative)
(As immortalized in a Mystery Science Theater episode.)
Re:I fail to see how that was the robot's fault (Score:3, Informative)
Industrial equipment does not stop instantly. Sensors that trigger a stop may prevent some incidents, but not all. No level of technology, not even say an fully functional Asimov robot or even the say Star Trek's Data will overcome human nature.
Re:gets off on a technicality (Score:5, Informative)
The first death by 'robot' was in the 17th century (Score:2, Informative)
"The clock tower, a Renaissance tower built in 1496, marks the entry to the main shopping drag... From the Piazza you can see the bronze men (moors) swinging their huge clappers at the top of each hour. In the 17th century one of them knocked an ususpecting worker off the top and to his death -- probably the first ever killing by a robot."
Only 400 years earlier than this recent accident, and I think it qualifies about as well for "death by robot".
(p.s. - I just remembered what quote I have in my sig. Oddly appropriate for this story)
Re:the fence was probably there for a reason (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it did occur to me, and it has occurred to a lot of other people besides. I've been doing some work in a facility that uses welding robots to fabricate parts of railway rolling stock, and all of them are protected by multi-zone floor scanners which slow or stop the robot depending where you stand.
There's also an international standard, ISO 10218, Manipulating Industrial Robots - Safety, which specifies distance zones depending on the time required to stop the machine. There's a pretty good overview of how it all works here: http://www.sick.com/gus/products/product_catalogs/ industrial/en.toolboxpar.0003.file.tmp/SichereMasc hinen_en.pdf [sick.com] - PDF Warning - Sick is the company which supplies most of the sensors at the fabrication workshop, btw.
Re:the fence was probably there for a reason (Score:3, Informative)
25 Years ago! (Score:2, Informative)
When this accident happened 25 years ago, we wouldn't have had the level of safety that is seen today.
A modern robot cell could comprise of light guards, locking guards switches, and a lock-down procedure for maintenance, perhaps even some light guards. All safety will be dual-redundant, based on hardware and not rely on software.
If you tell the system to open the guard door, you want to be damm sure that the guard switches will open and the robot will not be able to run (its also normal to put a padlock on the door, to stop anyone locking you in and pressing "start"....)
The story has nothing to do with robot intelligence, and more to do with operator training and proceedures.
The said robot could have been waiting for a sensor to detect something, and the guy jumping into the cell could have been enough to make the switch.
The average industrial robot has no more intelligence than a bit of Javascript. Sure you can make choices based on sensors/vision systems, but its still pretty dumb, but also very powerful and fast...
Jason (1st post!!)
Re:Not robots... (Score:3, Informative)
robot Audio pronunciation of "robot" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (rbt, -bt)
n.
1. A mechanical device that sometimes resembles a human and is capable of performing a variety of often complex human tasks on command or by being programmed in advance.
2. A machine or device that operates automatically or by remote control.
3. A person who works mechanically without original thought, especially one who responds automatically to the commands of others.
[Czech, from robota, drudgery. See orbh- in Indo-European Roots.]robotic adj.
Word History: Robot is a word that is both a coinage by an individual person and a borrowing. It has been in English since 1923 when the Czech writer Karel apek's play R.U.R. was translated into English and presented in London and New York. R.U.R., published in 1921, is an abbreviation of Rossum's Universal Robots; robot itself comes from Czech robota, "servitude, forced labor," from rab, "slave." The Slavic root behind robota is orb-, from the Indo-European root *orbh-, referring to separation from one's group or passing out of one sphere of ownership into another. This seems to be the sense that binds together its somewhat diverse group of derivatives, which includes Greek orphanos, "orphan," Latin orbus, "orphaned," and German Erbe, "inheritance," in addition to the Slavic word for slave mentioned above. Czech robota is also similar to another German derivative of this root, namely Arbeit, "work" (its Middle High German form arabeit is even more like the Czech word). Arbeit may be descended from a word that meant "slave labor," and later generalized to just "labor."