The incident occurred when the man, a robotics company employee in his 40s, was inspecting the robot.
The robotic arm, confusing the man for a box of vegetables, grabbed him and pushed his body against the conveyer belt, crushing his face and chest, South Korean news agency Yonhap said.
He was sent to hospital but later died.
Why would it handle boxes of vegetables with enough force to cause crush injuries in humans?
I do not know im just going by what the article laid out. It was a sensor malfunction. Maybe that sensor helps keep it from using to much pressure???
Probably just a good old fashioned presence sensor. If the sensor is triggered, there's a "box" there, and the robot does a pre-programmed set of actions. The robot would place the box on the conveyor nicely, but if the man's head and chest stuck out differently than the box does, robot doesn't care. It goes to the programmed position regardless. By the time it encounters enough resistance to trigger the collision detection, the damage has already been done.
ouch
Weight and speed. The arm itself is hefty and requires a fair bit of torque to move around and you want these operations to be completed quickly.
It has a given strength, and will use that to get to its destination unless programmed to detect undue force. This one obviously wasn't.