[LINK] Company Pays Up after Robot Breaches First Law

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

On 12/05/2020 11:52 am, Roger Clarke wrote:
> [I've no idea what a 'robotic cell' is, nor why a worker was in it]

https://blog.robotiq.com/what-is-robot-cell-deployment-and-what-it-isnt

To call it a robot and invoke the mystical First Law of Robotics is the
usual vendor exaggeration. It's automation.

Essentially a robotic cell is a single machine that has pre-programmed
actions. The pre-programming may be complex and responds logically and
deterministicaly to input data from sensors.

The failure is either in the safety sensors (assuming there are any) or
in the logic in the software.

Whatever the cause, it is a case of human error - someone did not
account for all possibilities in the software or did not maintain the
equipment so false data was input. Even then it could be argued that not
enough redundancy was built in to avoid single points of failure.

-- 

Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
email: brd at iimetro.com.au