New Delhi: In South Korea, a tragic incident unfolded as a man in his 40s, employed by a robotics company, lost his life when an industrial robot failed to distinguish him from vegetable boxes.

The mishap occurred during a sensor inspection at an agricultural produce distribution center in South Gyeongsang province. While the robotic arm was lifting pepper boxes onto pallets, it malfunctioned, picking up the man instead and pushing him against a conveyor belt, resulting in fatal injuries.

The employee had been checking the sensor ahead of a test run at the pepper sorting plant, initially scheduled for November 6 but delayed by two days due to reported sensor issues.

The Dongseong Export Agricultural Complex, which owns the plant, emphasized the need for a “precise and safe” system following the incident.

Christopher Atkeson, a robotics expert at Carnegie Mellon University, highlighted the challenge of robots having limited sensing and awareness. “Robots have limited sensing and thus limited awareness of what is going on around them,” Christopher Atkeson, a robotics expert at Carnegie Mellon University, told MailOnline.

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This tragic event echoes a similar incident in May, where a man in South Korea suffered severe injuries from a robot entrapment at an automobile parts manufacturing plant.

As per a report published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, as many as 41 people died in similar incidents in US where robots malfunctioned, resulting in death of human. The deaths were recorded from between 1992 and 2017.

“Many of these striking incidents occurred while maintenance was being performed on a robot,” said the study report. It is noteworthy that stationary robots were responsible for nearly 83 per cent of the fatal incidents.