While he was part of a team of technicians/developers at the Volkswagen car factory in Baunatal, 100 km north of Frankfurt, the stationary parts-selection and handling robot moved past, outside and against what it was supposed to do, turned and grabbed him, throwing him onto a metal platform. The 22-year-old technician (whose name has not been given in the reports), although he was within the prescribed safety distance, suffered serious head injuries. He was killed. This happened in early July 2015.
The anonymous dead man (murdered?) does not even have the posthumous honor of being declared the first such case by a robotic machine. He is the third. In 1979, early on, a worker was killed when a heavy robotic arm struck him on the head in the assembly section at the Ford plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, USA. And in 1981 a worker was killed at a Kawasaki factory in Japan while repairing a robot. So, it’s a first only for Europe.
Experts recommend staying calm, and they are right. The robot uprising against humans has not begun! After all, a century ago someone could be killed by a kick from their donkey – that wasn’t an uprising either. Just an accident.
The only one who had a bit of a problem with the 22-year-old’s death at the Volkswagen factory was the German judiciary. Criminal charges should have been brought… but against whom? The programmers? Did they know they had made a mistake—one so serious it would turn the machine into a killer? Or against the machine, so the case could quickly be shelved?