Death by Robot.

From the Guardian, UK

"A robot has killed a contractor at one of Volkswagen’s production plants in Germany, the automaker has said.

The man died on Monday at the plant in Baunatal, about 100km (62 miles) north of Frankfurt, VW spokesman Heiko Hillwig said.

The 22-year-old was part of a team that was setting up the stationary robot when it grabbed and crushed him against a metal plate, Hillwig said.

He said initial conclusions indicate that human error was to blame, rather than a problem with the robot, which can be programmed to perform various tasks in the assembly process. He said it normally operates within a confined area at the plant, grabbing auto parts and manipulating them."

Not sure whether this would be reported in North America.
May be worth your following this story and learning the lessons which can be learned.

Rich

On a related note...

Not unheard of when setting up or repairing a robotic work cell, you have to be in there with the live robot to service it and sometimes they just do weird things. When I was with Brown Plastics they had a very similar incident in Italy in the mid 90s. Robots can fail in bizarre and unpredictable ways, so you best be damn sure you know what you are doing when you crawl into a live machine cell.

Winterfalke said:

Not unheard of when setting up or repairing a robotic work cell, you have to be in there with the live robot to service it and sometimes they just do weird things. When I was with Brown Plastics they had a very similar incident in Italy in the mid 90s. Robots can fail in bizarre and unpredictable ways, so you best be damn sure you know what you are doing when you crawl into a live machine cell.

Click to expand...

You should never be in a "LIVE" robot cell..... PERIOD. (Live indicating automatic mode). You should always have the bot in teach (manual) mode and be carrying an enabling device, whether that be the teach pendant or a secondary dead man switch. The speed is severely restricted in teach / manual mode and gives you plenty of time to avoid being "grabbed and pinned against a metal plate"

The report clearly states there was no issue with the robot and it was "human error" related - i.e. someone bypassed the safety(s) is the way I read it..

SKYNET is active!

Certainly not the first time.
But ......."Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week......".
Bob

Happens...

And Charles Darwin just smiled and nodded.

each and every time i get between a tool and part on a big cnc gantry mill i make sure it is override rapid and feed rate at 0%
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a 2" dia cutter over a foot long if you got in between on a 40 hp machine it will stab or crush with tons of force. usually it would be fatal. i measure bore dia all the time. it only takes once to get in a machines way.
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same with a punch press. get in the way and no safety mechanism and it will crush a person

Tonytn36 said:

You should never be in a "LIVE" robot cell..... PERIOD. (Live indicating automatic mode). You should always have the bot in teach (manual) mode and be carrying an enabling device, whether that be the teach pendant or a secondary dead man switch. The speed is severely restricted in teach / manual mode and gives you plenty of time to avoid being "grabbed and pinned against a metal plate"

The report clearly states there was no issue with the robot and it was "human error" related - i.e. someone bypassed the safety(s) is the way I read it..

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Live does not mean automatic, live means operable with power. In most situations you are not allowed to enter a machine cell unless the equipment is locked out and tagged, and all systems that could store energy, including springs and gravity, have been disabled or blocked. You only go into a functioning automation system with the system under human control, even if only stepping through the program in reduced speed mode, and with a second person outside the system with their hand on the E-stop button. I have had situations where I had to sit on the robot itself (overhead mount) and run the program to watch the damn thing because it was not going to the programmed coordinates.

Winterfalke said:

Live does not mean automatic, live means operable with power. In most situations you are not allowed to enter a machine cell unless the equipment is locked out and tagged, and all systems that could store energy, including springs and gravity, have been disabled or blocked. You only go into a functioning automation system with the system under human control, even if only stepping through the program in reduced speed mode, and with a second person outside the system with their hand on the E-stop button. I have had situations where I had to sit on the robot itself (overhead mount) and run the program to watch the damn thing because it was not going to the programmed coordinates.

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We spent the last few months designing a safety rated system that specifically eliminated the need to do this on an application where all previous work required that the operator ride the machine tool in a large turbine housing. We used Scalence Wireless hardware and Go Pro cameras mounted to the robot to get things done safely. Yes it takes a little more time and money - but people get to go home in one piece to their family every day.

I am always surprised at the trash talking of the Chinese for being cheap and skipping basic safety protocol and safeguards yet when folks here say things like "Happens" or "I had to sit on the robot itself" . . . you are doing exactly the same things that the Chinese do.

If it is your robot, and your manufacturing operation and you directly benefit from the profits from your business - you can hold the 480 leads in your mouth and ride the robot all day long for all I care - but if you do this as an employee or ask an employee to do it . . . you are an idiot.

Here in the states, first OSHA will have a field day and nickle and dime you well into 6 figures . . . then the civil suit will come from the family and you will hope it is limited to 7 figures.

That's an incredibly ignorant and short sighted comment to take. I've done far more dangerous things than sit on a robot, and I've done many of them for fun. But professionally, I don't take unnecessary risks, and when I step into a potentially dangerous situation I make sure to do it under control and fully informed. In that situation, I was out of range of the end effector, and the robot was moving at 10% with the cutting tools removed and the spindle disabled, and I had the teach pendant with the E-stop button in my hand. And I also had a second observer standing in the door, also holding an E-stop switch. I have also gone into a permit required enclosure with a 180 gallon of cyanide gas on the roof to roof to check the valving. You know what? I followed the rules and procedures and we all lived, you arrogant jackass. Guess what, things do "happen" and no one can predict all of them. Sometimes the unexpected just creeps up on you and bites you in the ass. I am pretty well crippled at this point and it didn't happen because of my work, or me being careless, or my attitude, it's because I just happened to be sitting at a stop light in the clear daylight that some idiot decided to not stop for.

Your entitled to your opinion as am I . . .

I have done some stupid things too when I was young - like climb down a purse net tow line to reattach the purse rope in rough seas . . . I fortunately made it back safe and sound so I could post things like this 30 years later.

HIRA evaluations would make every effort to discover how to remove the risk through engineering, have a safety plan in place with time limits on permits, and specific training and oversight to deal with the risks that cant be avoided. It sounds like you are familliar with all that to your credit. Riding a robot simply wouldn't fly in any circumstance with the processes we control or within the customer facilities where we work. . . especially when an engineered solution can so easily be implemented with technology readily available to the masses.

I'll wear the badge "Jackass" proudly if it means every one of my staff and customers come home safe every day.

I was on an industrial tour of a shop fabricating heavy equipment. The presenter told everyone not to step past the yellow line as he outlined what was being done by the robotic arm welding on a huge base. Several times people stepped across the line unconsciously cutting the light curtain and shutting down the welding..... easily done.

And yet we do stuff like this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxbjZiKAZP4

motion guru said:

I am always surprised at the trash talking of the Chinese for being cheap and skipping basic safety protocol and safeguards yet when folks here say things like "Happens" or "I had to sit on the robot itself" . . . you are doing exactly the same things that the Chinese do.

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When I say "Happens" I mean it exactly that way.
Someone put themselves in harm's way...happens.

Fair observation Miguels . . .

The fact of the matter is that someone wound up in a body bag for doing something stupid that was easily preventable. And despite what some would believe, stupid can be minimized with proper training, proper safety protocol and proper safety system design. Several failures had to occur for this to happen - I wont hazard a guess as to why.

Anyone who knows me would never characterize me as being risk averse - on the flip side, when it comes to what you do for a living, especially in a manufacturing environment where you have to deal with machines that can kill you every day of your life . . . this is simply not the place to take risks as nothing you are doing at work is worth dying for to ship another truck load of car parts or potato chips or folded napkins or whatever.

cncFireman said:

And yet we do stuff like this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxbjZiKAZP4

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DAMN!!!
If I ever win (play) the lottery I am gonna buy one of those.
Imagine strapped into that while playing a racing or WWII flight sim !!

How cool would three monitors, surround sound and head tracking software be mounted to the end of that robot arm.

IronReb said:

DAMN!!!
If I ever win (play) the lottery I am gonna buy one of those.
Imagine strapped into that while playing a racing or WWII flight sim !!

How cool would three monitors, surround sound and head tracking software be mounted to the end of that robot arm.

Click to expand...

Yes, the video does look pretty cool and I think here in lies an underlying problem with this technology.

This ABB robot in the video appears to be a stock full motion robot that has had a chair mounted on the end. The whole setup appears to be what we would commonly see in the workplace when setting up a new application. It also appears that the people in the video "know what they are doing" in how to setup this robot and are just having some fun. The fun part looks very enticing.

Herein lies the problem. The people involved with this video appear to have a significant level of knowledge and skill in their discipline are completely oblivious to the fact that they are placing the seat occupier inside the envelope of motion of the robot. There are several motions, the inverted chair motion in particular which places the person in the seat in a position between the floor and the the robot. This is a prime situation of a crushing hazard. A software issue or motion control issue would be deadly.

What I think happens, and this applies to all of us, is that we develop a comfort level that falsely seduces us into thinking that we have full control of the technology no matter what. We loose the respect that the technology requires and lose sight of what the actual limits of our control of the situation actually is.

What further complicates the problem is that the technology has evolved over time. The pick and place automation that we started with was extremely predictable and limited in motion. It did not take much to be safe and the motion envelope was very limited. This has allowed us to bring forward some rather loose attitudes in safety into the present with full programmable motion in a multitude of axis and motions.

Add to this an innate attitude by humans that we are immortal we we end up doing stupid stuff like in the video.
This is the very thing that causes accidents, things we don't anticipate to happen and outside of the norm.

I don't want to sound like a kill joy but I really get concerned behaviors that reflect a lack of respect for the technology and its hazards.

Several years ago I was involved with a large automation project machining large castings. The raw casting was over 650lbs in weight. My portion of the project was not related to the automation but was working on some ancillary equipment to the machining cells. Large Fanuc robots were used to move the castings from pallet to pallet and machine to machine. The automation equipment had been run off before and we were just to the point of starting pre-production. At the time the castings were moved in an overhand motion from the first op to the second op across the aisle with the robot in the middle. Everything was working fine until an unusual set of circumstances triggered a bug in the software and commanded the robot to release the gripper while the casting was in motion at the top of the motion arc. Needless to say it got everyone rather excited when a casting of this size is let go while in motion from a significant height. This shutdown the automation part of the project for several weeks while every line of code was analyzed, part motion was analyzed and changed to reduce risks from malfunctions. This also triggered a re-design of the part grippers so that an accidental release could not occur unless the part was in position for release onto the pallet.

I suspect if the people involved with the video had been present at our project location, they would not be doing what they are doing.

Stuff happens as it is, we don't need to be putting ourselves in the middle of a hazardous situation.

I expect more of these types of stories with the much hyped, "Self-Driving Car", if we can classify them as robots. Only difference I can see is you are riding in them rather than on them.