Robot incidents in 2022
The Machine Record holds 12 incidents involving commercial robots in 2022, most involving Husqvarna: 8 where a person was hurt, 4 of them fatal, and 5 that reached a regulator, a recall or a court.
Counts measure what was reported in English 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.
By kind of machine
- Autonomous vehicle3
- Robot arm3
- Consumer2
- Industrial2
- Surgical1
- Warehouse AMR1
By company
- Husqvarna2
- Amazon1
- Cruise1
By outcome
- fatality4
- minor injury4
- no harm2
- property damage2
Cases
Every case dated 2022
Newest first. Each one links to its timeline and to the sources it rests on.
- 2022-09-01Employee Is Killed When Crushed By Spot Welding RobotInvestigation
- 2022-09-01Cruise recalls robotaxis after a passenger was injured in a crash.Recall
- 2022-09-01GM's Cruise recalls self-driving software involved in a June crashRecall
- 2022-09-01J.T. Beckham, a man in his 20s, was killed when he was pinned by a welding robot at the Unipres USA manufacturing plant in Forest, Mississippi.Report
- 2022-07-26A chess robot broke a seven-year-old boy's finger during a match in Russia, prompting a roundup of worst robotic accidents in history.Report
- 2022-07-21Chess robot grabbed and broke the finger of a seven-year-old child during a matchReport
- 2022-07-05Husqvarna's Automower 435X and Automower 535 robot lawn mowers caught fire during battery charging, resulting in five reported fire incidents, prompting a safety recall by the OPSS.Recall
- 2022-06-03A Cruise driverless robotaxi braked harshly while making an unprotected left turn and was struck by an oncoming speeding vehicle in San Francisco, resulting in minor injuries.Recall
- 2022-06-03a person, 71, died on June 26, 2022, after undergoing robotic surgery to remove prostate cancer at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London on June 3, 2022, with a lawsuit alleging the hospital lacked the resources to safely perform the procedure and failed to transfer him sooner to a major medical center.Report
- 2022-05-16A man was crushed to death by the compactor mechanism of an automated dumpster in Alexandroupolis, Greece, after reaching inside the bin.Report
- 2022-03-08A man claiming to be an Amazon warehouse employee posted a viral TikTok video showing himself temporarily trapped in an aisle by automatically moving robotic shelving units, taking approximately 15 minutes to find a way out with no reported injury.Report
- 2022-02-17Husqvarna Recalls All-Wheel Drive Robotic Lawnmowers Due to Fire Hazard (Recall Alert)Recall