Swedish Company Pays Fine For Accidental Robot Injury (This Shouldn’t Be News)
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Monday, 27 of April , 2009 at 10:50 pm
A judge in Sweden awarded a worker about $3000 in compensation for serious injuries sustained when an industrial robot designed to move rocks grabbed him by the head. The worker thought he had turned the robot off, but he hadn’t, and the robot was activated when he tried to repair it. The company probably has some safety liability, but it seems like it was mostly the fault of the worker, hence the $3000 judgment.
Seems fairly straightforward, right? But I bet you can probably see where this is headed…
Now, with all due respect to io9 (and I’m not intentionally singling them out, that’s just where I got the story from), their headline “Robot Beats Man In Sweden, Grabbing His Head and Shaking Him” is kind of misleading and, if I may say so, also kind of anti-robot and a symptom of media bias against robot accidents in general in that it attributes some kind of motive that obviously doesn’t exist. Industrial robots are tools. Big, dangerous ones. If instead of a robot it had been, say, a bandsaw that the worker forgot to properly turn off before messing with it, there would be no news here. But instead, all kinds of malicious motives are attributed to a piece of machinery that has none. If you need to replace a belt in your car but you forget to turn the engine off and it breaks your arm when you reach into the engine compartment, whose fault is that? Would anyone say that the car “assaulted” you? Of course not. The car was just doing what it was designed to do. And as we’ve discussed before, cars in general are arguably more robotic than an industrial robot is.
So, come on people, chill out. When robots come to kill us all, we’ll know it, but when accidents happen, especially accidents that are caused by a person not turning the robot off first, that’s all they are: accidents.
[ SvD In Swedish, translated here ] VIA [ io9 ]
Comments (29)
Category: Industrial
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Comment by Alex
Made Tuesday, 28 of April , 2009 at 1:01 pm
You’re so right about the media slant on this kind of accident. It’s a bit sensationalist.
Comment by Charlie
Made Tuesday, 28 of April , 2009 at 7:07 pm
You, sir, are a robo-apologist! When the great robot uprising comes, they won’t remember your cyber-coddling and will treat you just like the rest of us meatbags.
Comment by Evan Ackerman
Made Wednesday, 29 of April , 2009 at 12:13 am
No, see, they’ll need people like me to spread their propaganda…
Comment by Evan Ackerman
Made Wednesday, 29 of April , 2009 at 12:13 am
(which I am totally not already doing, I swear)
Comment by vdorr
Made Wednesday, 29 of April , 2009 at 1:24 am
Думаю каждый человек в праве выбрать, то что ему больше по душе. Поэтому думаю вы сделали правильный выбор
Comment by Ironman
Made Wednesday, 29 of April , 2009 at 12:17 pm
keep fighting the good fight.
Comment by HireMicaCarne
Made Saturday, 2 of May , 2009 at 12:25 pm
Вот решил вам немного помочь и послал этот пост в социальные закладки. Очень надеюсь ваш рейтинг возрастет.
Comment by HireMicaCarne
Made Tuesday, 5 of May , 2009 at 1:43 pm
Спасибо. Уже не первый раз по делу пишете!)
Comment by HireMicaCarne
Made Tuesday, 5 of May , 2009 at 2:44 pm
Извините если не туда, но как с админом сайта связаться?
Comment by Cavaemell
Made Tuesday, 5 of May , 2009 at 3:24 pm
Хм, почему-то у меня вместо заголовка блога вопросики…
Comment by offesKneext
Made Wednesday, 6 of May , 2009 at 4:03 am
Спасибо за статью, интересно было почитать
Comment by bosageb
Made Wednesday, 13 of May , 2009 at 1:50 pm
Уважаемый автор блога, а вы случайно не из Москвы?
Comment by kefasot
Made Thursday, 14 of May , 2009 at 5:00 pm
Извините если не туда, но как с админом сайта связаться?
Comment by kosihem
Made Friday, 15 of May , 2009 at 4:47 am
Хорошо пишете. Учились где-то или просто с опытом пришло?
Comment by lutucho
Made Friday, 15 of May , 2009 at 5:46 am
Добавил в свои закладки. Теперь буду вас намного почаще читать!
Comment by ditujih
Made Friday, 15 of May , 2009 at 7:40 am
Что-то футер у вас вправо съехал (в опере при разрешении 1024х768)
Comment by komamoc
Made Friday, 15 of May , 2009 at 8:35 am
Хорошо пишете. Учились где-то или просто с опытом пришло?
Comment by zychady
Made Friday, 15 of May , 2009 at 9:30 am
Спасибо. Уже не первый раз по делу пишете!)
Comment by thicosy
Made Friday, 15 of May , 2009 at 11:22 am
Почему этот вебсайт не имейте другую поддержку языков?
Comment by gigacak
Made Monday, 25 of May , 2009 at 4:10 am
Все отлично, но вот у любого блога постоянная проблема с трансляцией rss! Хотелось бы и с коментами получать. Но нет. Это вообще решаемо? :)
Comment by jepukuq
Made Monday, 25 of May , 2009 at 10:15 am
Хорошо пишете. Учились где-то или просто с опытом пришло?
Comment by rylocul
Made Monday, 25 of May , 2009 at 11:08 am
Хм, почему-то у меня вместо заголовка блога вопросики…
Comment by ExcinkMic
Made Tuesday, 26 of May , 2009 at 5:25 pm
И все же, многое остается не ясным. Если не затруднит, распишите подробнее.:-)
Comment by Алексей Александров
Made Friday, 29 of May , 2009 at 9:23 pm
Решил помочь и разослал ссылку на этот пост в социальные закладки. Надеюсь поднимется популярность ;)
Comment by mymytop
Made Saturday, 6 of June , 2009 at 2:57 am
Да, жаль, что обновления на блоге происходят не так часто, как хотелось бы.
Comment by Риски
Made Saturday, 6 of June , 2009 at 5:59 am
Приятно когда можно комментарий оставить. Мне нравится ваш сайт!
Comment by MAЙЯ
Made Saturday, 20 of June , 2009 at 6:23 pm
Интересный пост, спасибо вам. Меня интересует вопрос – будет ли продолжение? :)
Comment by Артемий
Made Tuesday, 30 of June , 2009 at 3:59 am
Хм: А мне кажется, минусы намного превосходят плюсы
Comment by dom2009
Made Monday, 3 of August , 2009 at 8:01 pm
Приветствую! Предлагаю вам посетить сайт о дом 2.