A man was crushed to death in a South Korean factory after a robot mistook him for a box of food.
The employee, a man in his 40s, was crushed while inspecting the robot, according to local media.
The robot arm confused him for a box of vegetables it was programmed to handle and grabbed him against the conveyor belt, according to the local news agency, Yonhap.
The man’s face and body was crushed by the belt, and he later died of his injuries, the BBC reported.
Local media reported that the robot was responsible for lifting boxes of peppers and putting them onto pallets.
The man had been checking the robot’s sensor ahead of a test run at the pepper sorting plant in South Gyeongsang province, scheduled for November 8.
The man, who worked for the company which made the robot, had been called in as problems with the robot’s sensor were noticed two days beforehand.
He was running checks on the machine when the malfunction occurred late on Wednesday night.
In a statement, an official from the Donggoseong Export Agricultural Complex, which owns the plant, called for a “precise and safe" system to be established, reported Yonhap.
In an incident in March, man in his 50s suffered serious injuries, also in South Korea, after getting trapped by a robot while working at an car parts manufacturing plant.
