A man has been crushed to death after a robot he was working on failed to differentiate him from the boxes of vegetables it was handling.
The unnamed man, who was a robotics company employee in his 40s, had been inspecting the robot when the tragedy occurred in South Korea.
According to South Korean news agency Yonhap, via the BBC, the robotic arm had mistaken the man for a box of vegetables.
The robot then grabbed the man and pushed his body against the conveyor belt, crushing his face and chest according to the outlet.
Despite being rushed to hospital, the engineer tragically could not be saved and later died of his injuries.
According to reports from Yonhap, the robot had been responsible for lifting boxes of peppers and transferring them onto pallets.
The man had reportedly been checking the robot's sensor operations before its test run, which was due to take place on November 8 at the pepper sorting plant in South Gyeongsang province.
The outlet cited police saying that the test had originally been planned for November 6 but had to be pushed back by two days due to issues with the sensor on the robot.
Late on Wednesday night, the man - who worked for the company that manufactured the arm and who has not been publicly identified - had been running checks on the machine when it reportedly malfunctioned.
Donggoseong Export Agricultural Complex, which owns the factory where the incident occurred, said in a statement that it called for a "precise and safe" system to be introduced.
It is not the first time a worker has been injured by a robotic arm malfunctioning, as a South Korean man in his 50s suffered serious injuries in March after getting trapped by a robot while working at an automobile parts manufacturing plant.
Featured image credit: Yuichiro Chino/Getty Images
