Robot crushes man to death by mistaking him for food box in S Korea

A man was crushed to death by a robot in South Korea after it failed to distinguish him from the boxes of food it was handling, BBC reports.

The incident occurred while the man, a 40-year-old employee of a robotics company, was inspecting the robot.

According to South Korean news agency Yonhap, the robotic arm mistook the man for a box of vegetables and grabbed him and pushed him against the conveyer belt, crushing his face and chest.

He was taken to the hospital and died there.

According to Yonhap, the robot was in charge of lifting pepper boxes and transferring them to pallets.

The man was testing the robot's sensor operations ahead of its test run at the pepper sorting plant in South Gyeongsang province on 8 November, according to the agency, which cites police.

The test was originally scheduled for 6 November, but it was pushed back two days due to sensor issues with the robot.

The man, a worker for the company that made the robotic arm, was running checks on the machine late Wednesday night when it malfunctioned.

Following the incident, an official from the Donggoseong Export Agricultural Complex, which owns the plant, called for the establishment of a "precise and safe" system.

In March, a man in his fifties from South Korea was seriously injured after becoming trapped by a robot while working at an automobile parts manufacturing plant.