Though automation and robots are hailed as the way forward, they can pose significant risks to humans if proper safeguards are not in place. — Designed by stories / Freepik
A video of a robot malfunctioning in Singapore has sparked conversation about whether robots are ready to take our jobs, especially as their use proliferated during the pandemic.
In the recording, an automated robot arm at a coffee shop at One Punggol Hawker Centre misplaced a coffee pot, causing it to fall.
The robot failed to detect this and continued to pour steaming hot coffee, which spilled all over the floor to the shock of onlookers.
The issue was resolved by a staff member who repositioned the coffee pot correctly for the machine.
The Facebook video went viral with over 600 shares and 200 comments, with one person joking that the robot probably needed its own ‘coffee break’ after working for long hours.
Last July, a chess-playing robot broke the finger of a seven-year-old opponent at a tournament in Russia. — 123rf.com
Chaos at chess
Last July, a chess-playing robot broke the finger of a seven-year-old opponent at a tournament in Russia.
Sergey Lazarev, the president of the Moscow Chess Federation, said the robot grabbed the boy’s finger as he attempted to make his next move.
Once it had his fingers in its grip, it wouldn’t let go – it took two people about 15 seconds to pry open the robot’s claws and free the boy’s finger.
According to Lazarev, the boy did not wait for the robot to complete its move and fully retract its arm from the board before making his move.
“The child made a move, and after that it was necessary to give time for the robot’s response, but the boy hurried, (and) the robot grabbed him,” Lazarev said in a report by Russian news agency Tass.
“The robot broke the child’s finger. This is of course bad.”
According to Lazarev, the child was able to continue competing the next day, though he had to wear a cast.
The video of the incident, which went viral on social media, attracted the attention of chess legend Garry Kasparov, who infamously became the first reigning world chess champion to lose to a computer in 1997.
He had only one response: “I tried to warn you!”
In a separate report, Moscow Chess Federation vice president Sergey Smagin said there were no plans to retire the robot from future tournaments despite the incident.
Smagin labelled the incident as extremely rare, saying that the robot had been used for 15 years at other events without any issues.
Instead, the organisation plans to “constantly remind young participants to wait for the robot to complete its move”.
Cop out
For many, the mention of the word RoboCop will trigger an image of an imposing high-tech cyborg law enforcer inspired by the sci-fi thriller of the same name.
However, the reality is somewhat different, as a robocop introduced in 2019 looked more like Daleks, popular conical robot villains in Dr Who shows whose design was inspired by old-style pepper pots. And it may even ignore your call for help.
In June 2019, the Huntington Park police force announced that a robot that it named HP RoboCop would be joining its department to patrol areas such as buildings and parks.
The 5ft, 180kg robot was fitted with a 360° video camera for recording footage, a speaker for playing out messages and an alert button that can be pressed to notify the monitoring centre that assistance or police may be needed.
However, a few months later, when a fight broke out at a park, the robot was of no help.
A bystander, Cogo Guerbara, ran towards the robot to call for help through the alert button, but after repeatedly pressing it, the robot told her to “step out of the way”.
Online reports detailed how, as the fight was happening, the robot just continued on its patrol while “humming a tune”.
Eventually, Guerbara’s friend called the police through a phone and an ambulance arrived to pick up a woman who was bleeding due to the fight.
Cosme Lozano, chief of police of Huntington Park, later told NBC News that the robot’s alert button has yet to be connected to the police department as the department is still in the process of developing the protocol.
At that point in time, the button was designed to redirect the call to Knightscope, the company that made and leased the robot to the police department, according to Lozano, who admitted that the department is facing technical challenges incorporating the robot into the force.
Driving disasters
Autonomous vehicles are said to be the future of ridehailing, but many incidents have proven that much work is needed to make the technology safer for people.
In 2018, a fatal crash between a self-driving vehicle and a pedestrian in Arizona, United States, made headlines.
The Uber car was in autonomous mode with a vehicle operator when it hit a 49-year-old woman walking outside of a crosswalk with a bicycle.
As a result of the incident, Uber was suspended from carrying out further tests for self-driving vehicles in that state, while experts called for tighter regulations.
In 2020, the vehicle operator was charged for the crash, with the police describing the incident as avoidable had the operator not been streaming a TV show while on duty.
Another company to run into problems is Cruise, one of the first to receive a permit to launch a commercial robotaxi service in San Francisco, California, last year.
The Cruise robotaxi is a fully electric driverless vehicle with over 40 cameras and sensors for navigating traffic and detecting hazards. The cars are also equipped with three tablets – one in front and two at the back – that display the map and provide ride updates.
Shortly after Cruise received its permit, the company disclosed in a regulatory filing with the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it had to recall 80 robotaxis for a software update due to a crash.
According to the report, an oncoming vehicle was speeding at 40mph (64kph) in a 25mph (40kph) right-turn/bus-only lane while a Cruise vehicle was making a turn.
When the Cruise onboard system predicted that the oncoming vehicle would turn right and cross its path, it applied brakes to avoid a collision.
However, the oncoming vehicle unexpectedly moved out of the right-turn lane and collided with the rear right quarter panel of the Cruise AV, resulting in minor injuries to two riders.
Last month, Cruise announced another voluntary recall to update the software of 300 robotaxis after one vehicle hit the back of a city bus, though no injuries were reported.
“It (the bus) pulled out into a lane of traffic from a bus stop and then came to a stop,” the company said in a blog post, admitting that the “behaviour was reasonable and predictable”.
The Cruise vehicle, however, applied the brakes too late and rear-ended the bus at about 10mph (16kph).
“We identified the root cause, which was a unique error related to predicting the movement of articulated vehicles (for example, vehicles with two sections connected by a flexible joint, allowing them to bend in the middle), like the bus involved in this incident,” the company said.
In 2020, a report claimed that Amazon’s use of robots had led to more injuries to human workers. — AFP
Under pressure
Working alongside robots may sound like an exciting prospect, but some have discovered that these “mechanical colleagues” can be a painful experience.
In 2018, 24 employees at an Amazon warehouse in New Jersey, United States, had to be sent to the hospital after a robot accidentally punctured a can of bear repellent.
The can was filled with capsaicin, an active compound in chilli peppers.
The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union released a statement saying that the incident showed that Amazon’s automated robots put humans in dangerous situations.
“This is another outrageous example of the company putting profits over the health and safety of their workers, and we cannot stand for this.
“The richest company in the world cannot continue to be let off the hook for putting hardworking people’s lives at risk,” union president Stuart Appelbaum said.
The company claimed it has made efforts to protect its human workers from robot-related mishaps.
The next year, Amazon started providing its employees with Robotic Tech Vests to make its robots aware of human presence.
Sensors in the vest will notify the robots to slow down when a human enters an area to fix a robotic system or retrieve dropped objects. In addition, the vests are made to complement the robots’ current obstacle avoidance detection.
However, in 2020, the BBC reported that Amazon’s use of robots had led to more injuries to human workers.
It cited an investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting, which acquired internal records for 150 warehouses over four years, and found that facilities with robots had roughly 50% higher injury rates than those without.
“If you’ve got robots that are moving products faster and workers have to then lift or move those products faster, there’ll be increased injuries,” said Kathleen Fagan, a physician who inspected Amazon warehouses while on duty as a medical officer for the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Keeping up with robots has also taken a toll on Amazon warehouse workers in Britain, who initiated a 24-hour strike against the company in January this year.
They demanded better wages (at the time, Amazon raised their pay to just an extra 50 pence, or RM2.48 per hour) and also protested against gruelling work conditions such as being timed for toilet breaks and being pressured to keep up with targets or risk getting fired.
A worker, Darren Westwood, said he felt Amazon treats robots better than humans.
“We are treated worse than the robots doing automated tasks in the warehouses.
“If the robots have an issue, the company pays for them to be serviced, whereas if we drop below certain targets multiple times, we can be fired – we have to sort it out or get out,” he told The Guardian.
