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Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

businesskorea.co.kr

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Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#41

Post by DocTomoe »

pj_mukh wrote: post #12

Why does this article read like the robot actually got angry at a spectator. It did not, it does not have that capacity. This was definitely a glaring safety issue and the company should review all its failure modes that show up in public but an ”emotional” response this was not.

That's the other side of anthropomorphic robots: they get anthropomorphic attributes associated with them. A 4 axis robot arm hitting a worker is a machinery with bad safety settings and/or a worker who ignored them. A humanoid robot hitting a worker looks a lot like another worker hitting a worker.

Also take into account that these humanoid robots are specifically designed to integrate into spaces which usually were not used by robots before, which immediately means more potential contact between them and non-trained personnel, even civilians.

I feel we are quickly approaching ST:TNG "The Measure of a Man" territory here: At what point does a machine stop being a machine and becomes a being, a strange, technological being, sure, but a being nonetheless. After all, there's a good argument to be made that we are essentially biological robots.

Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#42

Post by imhereforwifi »

usaphp wrote: post #27
themanmaran wrote: post #2

Video of the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JiOAqNpxlE

it looks like the robot tripped at the barricades and balanced itself.

thats what it looks like to me. It looked like it was trying to continue the handshake while the person was pulling back and the robot was moving forward and stuttered and tripped on the bottom of the barricade causing it to lunge and try and stabilize itself.

Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#43

Post by DocTomoe »

mattlondon wrote: post #16

Years ago when I was a student at uni I volunteered to take part in a research study with robots. I went to a rented house near campus where they had a normal living room set up and sat me down on a dining chair in the room and handed me a box with a button on it. "The robot will approach you. Just press the button when you feel like it is getting too close" they said. They left the room so I was alone, and a few min…

5 quid? The was a psychology research project, good sir. I hope you got lab hours for that.

Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#44

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

i5heu wrote: post #10

What incredible click bait. There is nothing "Incident", "Raising Alarm" or "Shocking" about this. "Robot in Tianjin stumbles" there i fixed the Title.

Assuming it's true that it just stumbled and the "incident" part is a nothingburger, the headline as written is still literally accurate. It's also still worth discussing: was the robot appropriately cautious of its surroundings when it performed that maneuver? Perhaps it could not have been aware enough to avoid all potential damage and that could be another discussion.

Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#45

Post by scratchyone »

janalsncm wrote: post #14

The video is pretty unsettling, kind of showing how strong robots can be compared with humans. (We already knew this, but it’s good to remember.) Reminds me a bit of the chess robot that broke a child’s finger: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jul/24/chess-robot-gr... What annoyed me at the time was them describing the child as having broken some “rule” about waiting for the robot or something. We should reject…

That article is absurd, describing the robot as being completely safe while blaming the kid saying "children need to be warned".

Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#46

Post by TeMPOraL »

pj_mukh wrote: post #12

Why does this article read like the robot actually got angry at a spectator. It did not, it does not have that capacity. This was definitely a glaring safety issue and the company should review all its failure modes that show up in public but an ”emotional” response this was not.

We could claim it was self-preservation or collision avoidance routine, perhaps mistakenly triggered by bad sensor input and/or coding error. However, that's also the reasons for which a human could get "angry at the spectator" and display the same behavior.

Obviously there's a difference, but similarities are uncanny.

Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#47

Post by throwanem »

inglor_cz wrote: post #37
cryptoz wrote: post #8

Reminds me of that time in Russia at the chess tournament, where they repurposed some industrial robot to play chess and it crushed a kid’s hand. Also reminds me of when Uber got kicked out of California to test self driving cars, so they moved to Nevada and promptly killed a woman. I guess it’s not surprising that safety is taking a back seat in robotics development everywhere in the world. It’s a mad race for profi…

For self-driving cars, safety is probably not taking a back seat, otherwise there wouldn't be much profit in them. We just have an unrealistic expectation that they can and must be 100 per cent harmless, which we would never extend to human drivers. The vast majority of previous transport tech, including horses and mules, was way more gory and dangerous than self-driving cars are. This includes quite recent developme…

One? Heselden's the only one to come immediately to mind. That the owner of the company should drive its product off a fatally high cliff is embarrassing, but still quite literally n=1.

Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#48

Post by lurk2 »

pj_mukh wrote: post #12

Why does this article read like the robot actually got angry at a spectator. It did not, it does not have that capacity. This was definitely a glaring safety issue and the company should review all its failure modes that show up in public but an ”emotional” response this was not.

It's important to note that a robot gone rogue is still a killer robot even if the robot doesn't hate you.

Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#49

Post by i5heu »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #44
i5heu wrote: post #10

What incredible click bait. There is nothing "Incident", "Raising Alarm" or "Shocking" about this. "Robot in Tianjin stumbles" there i fixed the Title.

Assuming it's true that it just stumbled and the "incident" part is a nothingburger, the headline as written is still literally accurate. It's also still worth discussing: was the robot appropriately cautious of its surroundings when it performed that maneuver? Perhaps it could not have been aware enough to avoid all potential damage and that could be another discussion.

At which point does a "thing that moves by itself" like a Railway crossing and a thing that keeps itself in an upright position become a robot that needs to determine if an action can lead to physical harm on something else or itself?

I do not thing this thing can be cautious because it is a remote controlled car with 2 legs and everything the "AI" part is doing build down to keeping balance and locating the position that it hardcoded needs to grab.

Or in other words there is an operator, like with an RC car or a real car.

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