Kang Jin-gi, the head of the investigations department at Goseong Police Station, said: “It wasn’t an advanced, artificial intelligence-powered robot, but a machine that simply picks up boxes and puts them on pallets.”
Another police official said investigators were looking into the possibility of human error in the robot, whose sensors are designed to identify boxes.
Security camera footage from the incident shows the man had moved near the robot with a box in his hands, which caused the machine’s reaction, the official said.
He added: “It’s clearly not a case where a robot confused a human with a box – this wasn’t a very sophisticated machine.”
This is not the first time South Korea has had safety accidents involving industrial robots.
In March, one crushed and seriously injured a worker who was examining the machine at a factory in Gunsan.
And last year, another fatally crushed a worker at a milk factory in Pyeongtaek.
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