Robot crushes worker to death at packaging plant in horrific freak accident
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An industrial robot at a vegetable packaging plant in South Korea crushed a worker to death, police said.
The man died of head and chest injuries on Tuesday after he was grabbed by the machine and pressed against a conveyor belt, police in Goseong said.
The unidentified man was an employee of a company that installs industrial robots and was sent to the plant to examine whether the machine was working properly.
Officials say an investigation is underway as to whether the device was unsafe or had potential defects.
It is one of two robots used at the facility that packages vegetables exported to other Asian countries.
Kang Jin-gi, the head of the investigations department at Goseong Police Station, said: “It wasn’t an advanced, artificial intelligence-powered robot, but a machine that simply picks up boxes and puts them on pallets.”
Another police official said investigators were looking into the possibility of human error in the robot, whose sensors are designed to identify boxes.
Security camera footage from the incident shows the man had moved near the robot with a box in his hands, which caused the machine’s reaction, the official said.
He added: “It’s clearly not a case where a robot confused a human with a box – this wasn’t a very sophisticated machine.”
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This is not the first time South Korea has had safety accidents involving industrial robots.
In March, one crushed and seriously injured a worker who was examining the machine at a factory in Gunsan.
And last year, another fatally crushed a worker at a milk factory in Pyeongtaek.
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