Williams was one of three operators of the parts retrieval system, a five-story robot built by the Unit Handling Systems division of Litton Industries. The robot was designed to retrieve castings from high density storage shelves at the Flat Rock plant. Part of the machine included one-ton transfer vehicles, which were carts on rubber wheels equipped with mechanical arms to move castings to and from the shelves. When the robot gave erroneous inventory readings, Williams was asked to climb into the racks to retrieve parts manually. Another news account states the robot was not retrieving parts quickly enough.
He climbed into the third level of the storage rack, where he was struck from behind and crushed by one of the one-ton transfer vehicles, killing him instantly. His body remained in the shelf for 30 minutes until it was discovered by workers who were concerned about his disappearance.
His family sued the manufacturers of the robot, Litton Industries, alleging “that Litton was negligent in designing, manufacturing and supplying the storage system and in failing to warn [system operators] of foreseeable dangers in working within the storage area.” In a 1983 jury decision, the court awarded his estate $10 million and concluded that there simply were not enough safety measures in place to prevent such an accident from happening. He would go down in history as the first recorded human death by robot. The award was raised to $15 million in January 1984. Litton settled with the estate of Williams for an undisclosed amount in exchange for Litton not admitting negligence.
If you ever work on a modern industrial system then you’ll see all kinds of rules, safety measures and more fun
It often makes small jobs extremely tedious, but I always remind myself it’s because the robot arm I’m looking at is strong enough to throw me across the room or crush my bones.
Movies underestimate how a robot could kill a human with a single punch.
Terminator didn’t need firearms, it could just single punch everyone to death. Kind of crazy string chimps are but bigger, stronger and made of metal.
For me it’s the acceleration and speed they don’t comprehend.even “safe” collaborative robots can accelerate to huge speeds in the blink of an eye, and being electric they’ll do it at maximum force
I’ve driven one into my head before and its remarkable how soft it was thanks to the tech involved but movies miss the fact that if it wanted, even a small arm could have gone through me
Part of it is probably wrong extrapolation from experience. Even if I try to punch someone as hard as I can, there’s a comparatively low limit of damage I can do. Sure, in the wrong spot I could kill someone or seriously hurt them - but my body severely limits what I can do so I don’t hurt myself.
Robots don’t have these natural limits. They can be programmed in, but code can always fail. A robot doesn’t care if it will hurt itself by accelerating too quick or by continuously exerting high amounts of force. It’s as mindless as a rock crushing somebody, and much more agile.
A rock with goals
Oh yeah, I didn’t thing of that. Electric motors tend to have near-instant max torque.
Terminator would sucker punch Sarah Connor so fast she would be dead before she knew what that big Austria guy at the door wanted.
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Half of those rules are written in blood
There is a steel mill (recycling plant) in my town. They give tours every Friday. I have been 3 times, twice with teams of (software) engineers.
If you want to go see what engineering means when lives are on the line, tour a steel mill. Fucking amazing.