Robot incidents in 2015
The Machine Record holds 5 incidents involving commercial robots in 2015, most involving NASA: 4 where a person was hurt, 3 of them fatal, and 1 that reached a regulator, a recall or a court.
Counts measure what was reported in the press the register reads and cleared verification, not how many events took place. Fleet sizes are not public, so none of this is a rate. The rules are on the methodology page.
Reading the numbers
The 5 cases dated 2015 are spread over 5 months, with January 2015 the busiest at 1 and 7 months without a case. The newest case is dated 2015-08-14: A robot arm killed a co-worker at a car factory in India.
NASA accounts for 1 of the 5 cases (20%), followed by Volkswagen with 1; 3 cases name no company. By kind of machine, robot arms make up 60% of the set, ahead of consumer robots (1). Most cases are placed in Germany (1), with 3 other countries represented.
In 60% of the cases someone died. 4 cases (80%) record a person hurt, 3 of them fatal. The most common type of event is fatality (3). 1 case (20%) went beyond the first report to an investigation, a regulator, a recall, a fine or a court.
By company
By outcome
Every case dated 2015
Newest first. Each one links to its timeline and to the sources it rests on.
- 2015-08-14A robot arm killed a co-worker at a car factory in India.Follow-up
- 2015-07-07A worker at Ventra Ionia Main was trapped by robotic machinery and pronounced dead at the scene in Ionia, Michigan.Lawsuit
- 2015-06-29A technician was killed at a Volkswagen assembly plant in Germany after a robot he was assembling picked him up and pushed him into a metal plate.Follow-up
- 2015-02-05A Korean housewife's hair was sucked into a robot vacuum cleaner causing an incident at home.Follow-up
- 2015-01-01NASA's Robonaut 2 humanoid robot, developed with General Motors and installed on the International Space Station, suffered progressive hardware failures beginning in 2015 traced to a missing ground cable and was being returned to Earth for repairs as of February 2018.Report
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Every case added to the register in the last seven days, with its sources. Free, no account, and the register is the only sender.