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Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

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Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#411

Post by ta988 »

faeyanpiraat wrote: post #377
ta988 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a car company. We had robots for mounting parts. Big robotic arm several tons of pressure possible. I was part of the maintenance team, we get an alert for a robot malfunctionning. Coming in the area we see screwdrivers cleverly placed in all the safeties. And a guy trying to tweak the robot that was slowly moving...

Could you please elaborate? I don’t fully understand what’s going on with the tweaking? Is he next to the malfunctioning robot?

He was next to the robot (like his hip touching it) trying to do we never knew what with his hands on the robot. And the robot was moving of course all securities were disabled and it was in a kind of. debug/manual mode) He was also just an operator from the next stage of production, so he was not supposed to be here at all. We checked everything and ran the calibration and validation procedures and they went through so maybe he did repair it in the end.

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#412

Post by ta988 »

hutzlibu wrote: post #379
faeyanpiraat wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please elaborate? I don’t fully understand what’s going on with the tweaking? Is he next to the malfunctioning robot?

I think the malfunctioning was the guy shutting down safety meassures intentionally with screwdrivers? In other words, some person did something very stupid, while thinking he is clever.

Not just that, going next to it with securities off.

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#414

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

kibbleble wrote: post #376
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't feel bad :-) My 11 year-old son (a native English speaker) said the same thing to me just yesterday. "Hey, bud. Why don't you pick up those two plastic containers and follow me." "OK, but dad, it really confuses me when you say that. Can't you just say 'please pick up those containers'? It sounds like you're giving me an option but you're really not." Until he said that, I had never given it a thought. But he t…

Did your son really say "can't you just say?" :P I think English littered with these suggestive polite negation statements.

LOL. I didn't even notice that :-)

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#415

Post by mcjkrw »

317070 wrote: post #397
mcjkrw wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it affect the other people in the room, or were they too far away from it?

It affected everyone in the room and to a lesser extent the next rooms over if the door was open. Obviously, we did not shelve it right away since there seemed to be no permanent effect. Some people were really creeped out after they had been exposed in my first try. But this is an engineering lab, so soon enough the lab was filled with cowboys wanting to experience it and trying to figure out how it works. Meanwhile…

Sounds like fun. I had no idea something like that was possible.

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#416

Post by zentiggr »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #339
akiselev wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another awesome safety system is the SawStop which uses the conductivity of skin to monitor for contact against the blade in a tablesaw. If it detects contact a small explosive charge goes off, instantly sending a block of aluminum into the path of the blade, stopping it dead. Even a serious accident like leaning with an elbow against a moving blade is likely to result in little more than the scratch from hitting a s…

One thing I'm still unsure of regarding table saws: is there really much risk of injury if you follow all of the typically recommended safety practices? Every tablesaw injury I remember hearing about involved the operator failing to follow some of those guidelines.

This goes back to the basic point of safety work: Even the best trained, most attentive and careful operator can get into dangerous situations. There's no way to anticipate the moment that their attention might wander or some external circumstance might just force the situation.

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#417

Post by monocasa »

Doxin wrote: post #381
monocasa wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used to work in robotics. The QA folk were obviously very much sticklers for the full process of enabling the hardware interlocks before getting near the moving bits. One time a manager got mad at them for taking so long going through the full interlock process while repeating a failure mode. He therefore went up to the machine saying "look, it failed so it's stopped, that's how the code works!" At that point our bet…

I don't work in robotics so I might be entirely off-base here, but surely the interlock process would consist of hitting an E-stop somewhere? What was this process that took long enough for said manager to get annoyed with?

That cut power and the robot needed to fully recalibrate afterwards which took time while iterating trying to replicate a defect.

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#418

Post by zentiggr »

msrenee wrote: post #312
gxs wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another one is machinery where you have to "enter" the machine to do maintenance. Think industrial ovens. You're supposed to turn off the circuit breaker and lock it with your own personal lock that only you have the key to. That way no one can turn it on even if they wanted to. I've heard no one, under any circumstances is allowed to take the lock off. If the person leaves after their shift and forgets to take it of…

As someone else mentioned, that's a lockout-tagout procedure. Very common when doing any kind of maintenance on a machine. You isolate the power sources and place a personal lock on it to which only you have the key. It usually has your name and an ID number written on it. The lock cannot be removed by anyone else. If you, for instance, forget to take your lock off and go home, it's a very long process where they hav…

When I served on a submarine, tagout procedures were followed to the letter.

A typical maintenance period might require 100 or so separate tagouts, each of which could require anywhere from one to dozens of tags. Each duty watch was required to show up early enough to go through the entire tagout book and at least know the gist of what was in progress.

Finding a loose tag was an automatic all hands all work stoppage, until it was tracked down and resolved. No questions, even if your work was in a different compartment, or had no logical connection to what he tag was for.

Each new tagout request had to be signed off on by at least three people, sometimes all the way up to the captain and not just a foreman or supervisor but one or more shop heads.

Seawater system tagouts on a floating sub were serious business.

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#419

Post by vangelis »

arionhardison wrote: post #289
arionhardison wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they do not scale and they are not required. I would love to go into more detail if you shoot me an email we can discuss.

> Let's discuss in public, I think others might be interested. What do you mean by scale? Are you saying that the biologica are too expensive and you are looking for cheaper solutions? Apart from the price AFAIK they are the best known solution. In that case hurting yourself trying to find sth. cheaper is not worth it, because: a) it is bad for you b) it doesn't help others either, since even if your special cocktail…

HIPAA doesn't apply in your case, but it would still be impolite without asking them.

Re: Have you ever hurt yourself from your own code?

#420

Post by bellyfullofbac »

mcjkrw wrote: post #415
317070 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It affected everyone in the room and to a lesser extent the next rooms over if the door was open. Obviously, we did not shelve it right away since there seemed to be no permanent effect. Some people were really creeped out after they had been exposed in my first try. But this is an engineering lab, so soon enough the lab was filled with cowboys wanting to experience it and trying to figure out how it works. Meanwhile…

Sounds like fun. I had no idea something like that was possible.

I wonder what the physics behind it is. I guess if you have an aquarium of water with low frequency waves and overwhelm it with high frequency waves, you wouldn't be able to see the low frequency ones any more. Presumably (IANA physicist) it's the same thing but with sound waves.
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