“Malfunction” – IOTW Report

“Malfunction”

Tuesday, 26 December 2023, 23:15 MJA Uncategorized 28

 Tesla Robot Allegedly Suffers Malfunctions and ‘Attacks’ Engineer at Texas Factory, Leaving ‘Trail of Blood.’

GP: A robotic “malfunction” at Tesla’s Giga Texas factory resulted in a violent encounter where an engineer was allegedly attacked by one of the company’s robots, resulting in significant injuries and leaving a ‘trail of blood.’

According to the Daily Mail, while working on software programming for non-functional Tesla robots, the engineer was suddenly pinned against a surface by a robot tasked with manipulating aluminum car components, with its metal claws inflicted an injury that left an ‘open wound’ on the worker’s left hand.

“Two of the robots, which cut car parts from freshly cast pieces of aluminum, were disabled so the engineer and his teammates could safely work on the machines. A third one, which grabbed and moved the car parts, was inadvertently left operational, according to two people who watched it happen. As that robot ran through its normal motions, it pinned the engineer against a surface, pushing its claws into his body and drawing blood from his back and his arm, the two people said,” The Information reported. MORE

28 Comments on “Malfunction”

  1. Yeah, you gotta unplug them. Fuck’s sake.

    This is not angry robot shit, this is a fucking moron who didn’t put his locks and guards in place.

    The Daily Mail is full of bedwetting faggots, too.

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  3. “This is not angry robot shit, this is a fucking moron who didn’t put his locks and guards in place.”

    Exactly. Stupid hurts. I’ve seen some cnc’s hurt people bad because they took chances. I’m not believing this this thing was autonomous. It had one task.

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  6. The robot was just doing his job, living the dream, and he don’t know no better if he’s picking up a screw or pulling the face off some dipshit engineer.

    #robotlivesmatter

    17

  9. Is lock-out tag-out not a thing at Tesla? De-energize the equipment, put a lock-out tag on the box so it can’t be accidentally be powered-up again? I though anyone who worked on industrial equipment knew that much at least.

    10

  16. Uncle Al
    TUESDAY, 26 DECEMBER 2023, 23:30 AT 11:30 PM
    “Operator error. Failure to power down and secure all equipment in human work area before beginning maintenance.

    @SNS to follow up with full and I mean FULL details.”

    …I appreciate your confidence, Uncle Al, or perhaps your dread, not sure which. Either way, that’s my cue…

    The article specifies as many said above that the robot in question was NOT locked out. Someone working in the cell triggered an input. Then, “As that robot ran through its normal motions…” or ran its program, the guy was standing in a space the robot was programmed to enter, and presented less resistance than the robot was programmed to overload for. This resulted in him being struck by the End Of Arm Tooling (EOAT), that was designed to rapidly grip metal and NOT gently push idiots out of the way. You also make industrial robots run as quickly as possible to be as efficient as possible, one of the charms of robots being they can do anticipated things in protected spaces MUCH faster than a human can, and also much faster than a human can react.

    My cells have layers of protection in that they are fenced with hard-wired switches and light curtains on the entrances so making entry will break the emergency stop circuit to the robot controller BY DESIGN. Now, this DOES leave some opportunity for stupid as a light curtain doesn’t know which side you’re on so your “buddy” can turn it back ON with you on the wrong side or deliberately close the door with you inside, so lacks for the door switches are provided that the operator puts the lock in to physically block the door closure so the cell estop can NOT be released, and the key on a bracelet that they are to put on the wrist so it can’t be restarted unless the bearer unlocks the door. Then, our operators take the teach pendant in the cell WITH them after putting. it in manual so there’s ANOTHER layer of protection, plus this allows manual manipulation and view of IO and – critically – a portable ESTOP button. There is ALSO a lock on a disconnect that completely powers down the robot, making it physically IMPOSSIBLE for it to be anything but an inert lump of metal.

    All of thus is predicated on the operator properly doing HIS job.

    And that’s where it falls apart.

    …one of the things I stress with my guys is that the robot doesn’t hate you. The robot doesn’t love you. The robot doesn’t even KNOW about you. The robot

    DOES.
    NOT.
    CARE.

    ,but rather simply follows a programmed path through 3 dimensional space in response to inputs, and that’s it. The robot is STRONGER than you; the robot is FASTER than you; the robot is HEAVIER than you; the – ONLY – advantage YOU have over the robot is that you’re SMARTER than it.

    Allegedly.

    …sadly, many people USE their brain to try to outwit the SAFETY systems instead of actually do slightly inconvenient things that, you know, are designed to avoid their deaths.

    People die from this surprisingly frequently (as a quick Web search will reveal), so just two more egregious examples I remember was a car plant where the robot sometimes disturbed parts in a magazine that an operator had to enter the cell to correct. Sadly, there was a gap in a safety fence near the area and rather than get the issue fixed, operators learned to just reach in and straighten the parts by hand as the robot cycled away. One guy misjudged the cycle and lost an arm for it.

    Another guy worked in a parts plant that the inventory was serviced by high speed autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs). The vehicles themselves had no sensors for detecting people as they followed a track through a place not meant for human occupation that was defined by a fence that cut power to ALL the AGVs when opened. For reasons known only to himself this individual wanted to go into the protected area without shutting the system down long, so he rigged up a block and tackle affair to allow him to latch the door from over the fence; so he opened it, entered the area, and using his ropes latched it again.

    They found the ropes the next day.

    Along with his corpse.

    …when I was first starting, I remember the words of an engineer I was training with. Frustrated by the seemingly endless ways people “outsmarted” safety devices and programmed processes, he said “I can make it IDIOT proof, but I can’t make it F*ING idiot proof!”.

    There’s a lot to that.

    …since I now spend my days trying to cover every possible eventuality with counterprogramming, people still can and do surprise me, which I then use that the “idiot resistance” can be expanded. Pictograms and universally understood symbols like RED for STOP and GREEN for GO are particularly important in polyglot, international workplaces. But if you’re DETERMINED to do something stupid, I can’t really stop you.

    We had a guy nap in a robot cell once, for example, laying below the plane of the operator’s station field of vision behind a conveyor. The operator looked, saw nothing, then pushed the GO button. This startled Sleeping Beauty awake because the blower he was napping next to started up, and happily the operator noticed him and slammed the Estop before he was granted eternal slumber by the 12 foot tall Fanuc 410 robot. Not great for the robot brakes, but easier than filling out a death report (something ELSE I can tell you from experience).

    When, eh, “Coached” after the incident by a rather perturbed supervisor (who also saw a man at a different plant crushed to death by a fallen forklift so he wasn’t fond of the prospect of more), the ESL wiper in question looked at him and said, “that wouldn’t hurt me, would it?”.

    …Yaaaas. That’s what you’re up against. Too many people saw “Star Wars” and think robots are somehow benign, so much so that they think a 4200 pound robot with 500 pounds of payload that has NO idea where they are and wouldn’t care if it DID somehow won’t punt them like a football or shove their chest through their spine.

    So the salient thing to remember about a robot is that it

    DOES.
    NOT.
    CARE.

    and you aren’t enough mass to even slow it down if you are in it’s arc.

    Someone who’s NOT an idiot follows procedure and, among other things, tries to START the robot he allegedly disabled BEFORE climbing in the cage with it, then has it in MAN with the teach pendant IN HIS POSSESSION, and does whatever else procedures call for.

    Punishment for failing to do so can be immediate, severe, and messy.

    Robots are NOT your friends. They are NOT your co-workers. They are preprogrammed tools that simply

    DO.
    NOT.
    CARE.

    and will reward stupidity with death.

    I don’t know, it’s early yet, but what we see here suggests someone got careless.

    …bet he won’t do THAT again.

    But he should consider himself lucky he even has a CHANCE to…

    7

  17. Brad
    WEDNESDAY, 27 DECEMBER 2023, 0:01 AT 12:01 AM
    “Oh enough with the Loc out Tag out OSHA compliance crap. If we have an issue with a CNC we E stop it, get it fixed and fired up again. Time is money. Just use some damn common sense.”

    …to Brad’s point, no, you can’t lock robot cells out ALL THE TIME, but having fences and light curtains that act as E-stops, mechanical means of locking said fences so the cell can’t restart, requiring the operator to take the key, and requiring the operator to take the teach pendant go a LONG way to make temporary entry safe and still minimize down time. We have established procedures for this reviewed by EHS and described on local placards in One Point Lessons, and by the grace of God that had kept those types of injury at bay for the 18 years and thousands of employees we’ve had working with and around fully articulated robot arms.

    The common sense is hard to find tho, plus someone else’s responsibility. I work with robots precisely BECAUSE, unlike PEOPLE, they do what they’re told, and I am not suitable for HR duties. Mostly they send us low-skilled. high-turnover, pot smoking foreigners, and so my Sisyphean task of increasing idiot resistance based on the observed actions of idiots continues to keep me gainfully employed…

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  19. @SNS — No dread here! I always learn stuff from your comments, and I thank you for that. I just poked a little fun your way because I knew from past threads you have a lot of experience and expertise in the area of industrial robotics plus the ability to communicate it in great detail.

    …and to those who aren’t interested: that’s what the scroll wheel’s for.

    9

  25. SNS, you’ve out done yourself!

    And you can’t idiot proof the woods

    Or the workplace…

    Remember a STUPIDVISOR standing at a control panel forcing the constant restart of a slicing machine that made small pieces out of blocks of resin so that they could be ground into granular form. “The last block in the run so we’ll fix the problem after I get this one through.” No danger here, except frying the electrical system that was kicking it out. And VERY high voltage…

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