Robotics technician with 7 years under his belt here: these things only happen due to human error. Either at the integrators level (not the proper risk assessment made or poor programming/design) or by the worker (bypassing safety devices to get the job done). Now since this is South Korea, I don’t think they’d be bad off on providing safe machines in the first place. Since the robot unexpectedly moved, I’d have to guess the fence circuit of the robotic cell was jumped out in some way. Either by a hardwire jumper or taking the safety key off the door and jamming it in the receiving locking module. Normally when a safety circuit is broken (Emergency Stop, Fence/Gate/Light Curtain or Non-Teaching Enable Device) the robot has power to its servo motors disconnected physically.
On the integrators side,.perhaps they didn’t interface a safety gate in with the robot, perhaps they didn’t use dual chain safety (24v line and a 0v line that flip at the same time and if they don’t flip within a certain time of another, safety trips due to the time discrepancy). Doesn’t say what brand of robot was being used, but the 4 types of robots I’ve used (fanuc, abb, motoman and kuka) have had force sensitive feedback to stop the robot in the event of a collision. But that’s a collision, so even a robot at 100% collision detection is going to do some damage before it stops, possibly could kill too if programmed poorly.
There is a lot that can go wrong via human negligence of automated equipment. Having integrators and customers that understand the risks and practice good safety is vital to preventing workplace injuries on automated equipment! I’m proud to say the leading industry turnkey integrator I work for always has safety number one with our machines. Normally I would call BS if someone stated that, but we have almost endless checklists and design reviews geared towards safety. That’s what makes a great integrator standout from the mom and pop shops!
Robotics technician with 7 years under his belt here: these things only happen due to human error. Either at the integrators level (not the proper risk assessment made or poor programming/design) or by the worker (bypassing safety devices to get the job done). Now since this is South Korea, I don’t think they’d be bad off on providing safe machines in the first place. Since the robot unexpectedly moved, I’d have to guess the fence circuit of the robotic cell was jumped out in some way. Either by a hardwire jumper or taking the safety key off the door and jamming it in the receiving locking module. Normally when a safety circuit is broken (Emergency Stop, Fence/Gate/Light Curtain or Non-Teaching Enable Device) the robot has power to its servo motors disconnected physically.
On the integrators side,.perhaps they didn’t interface a safety gate in with the robot, perhaps they didn’t use dual chain safety (24v line and a 0v line that flip at the same time and if they don’t flip within a certain time of another, safety trips due to the time discrepancy). Doesn’t say what brand of robot was being used, but the 4 types of robots I’ve used (fanuc, abb, motoman and kuka) have had force sensitive feedback to stop the robot in the event of a collision. But that’s a collision, so even a robot at 100% collision detection is going to do some damage before it stops, possibly could kill too if programmed poorly.
There is a lot that can go wrong via human negligence of automated equipment. Having integrators and customers that understand the risks and practice good safety is vital to preventing workplace injuries on automated equipment! I’m proud to say the leading industry turnkey integrator I work for always has safety number one with our machines. Normally I would call BS if someone stated that, but we have almost endless checklists and design reviews geared towards safety. That’s what makes a great integrator standout from the mom and pop shops!
Software has edge-cases that are not easy to discover, they can have catastrophic results.
You can’t just automatically say it’s always human error.