The Yonhap news agency said on Wednesday that a man in South Korea was crushed to death by a robot that was handling product boxes, the robot seemingly failed to distinguish the man from the boxes.
The man, a 40-year-old employee of a robotics company, was examining the robot’s sensor functions at an Agric produce distribution centre in the province of South Gyeongsang.
According to Yonhap, the industrial robot that was moving boxes of bell peppers and setting them on a pallet appeared to have malfunctioned and mistakenly identified the victim for a box.
Yonhap claims that the man’s face and chest were crushed as the robotic arm forced his upper body up against the conveyor belt. He was reportedly taken to the hospital but passed away later.
A fifty-year-old South Korean man was seriously injured in March after getting trapped by a robot at a facility that made auto parts.
