Chess robot 'pinched off' 7-year-old boy's fingers, safety flaw sparks heated debate

According to the British "The Guardian" report, at last week's Moscow Chess Open, a 7-year-old boy's finger was accidentally injured by a chess robot while playing chess, causing a broken finger.

It is reported that the boy is one of the 30 best chess players under the age of 9 in the Russian capital. After the incident, the boy's finger was put in a cast and he continued to complete the rest of the race with the help of volunteers. The Guardian said the boy's injuries were not serious.

But this robot accident has triggered concerns from all walks of life about the safety boundaries between robots and humans.

1. The machine was not given time to respond. The International Federation of Physics and Astronomy said the boy operated improperly

It is not so much a robot as it is a standard industrial robotic arm, which can move three chess pieces on a chessboard. In the video posted on the Baza Telegram channel, we can see that the boy's fingers were clamped by the robotic arm for several seconds before he was rescued by a woman and three men.

Sergey Lazarev, president of the Moscow Chess Federation, said: "The robot broke the child's finger, which is really bad." He later explained the incident : "This robot was rented by us and it has successfully completed many games. During the battle, the child took the next step before the robot could react. The child did not give the robot time to react, causing the robot to catch the child. Fingers.”

2. The robot itself has security holes, and foreign media said that the designer did not consider it well

Chess Vice President Sergey Smagin said: “ This incident was just a coincidence, and the robot was absolutely safe. The robot had successfully completed three games that day. The boy violated the safety rules when playing chess with robots, and he did not realize that he had to give the robot enough time to react."

Foreign media The Verge believes that it is not so much the child who violated the safety rules when playing chess, but rather the robot’s designer who violated the robot’s safety rules for humans. When designers designed a chess robot, they seemed to only consider enabling it to recognize and move chess pieces, but did not consider allowing it to respond to human hands appearing in the chess area.

The designers created a machine that could unintentionally harm humans. The Verge said that such an accident could have been avoided through some simple design. For example, designers can place a camera above the chessboard and have the robot arm automatically stop moving if a foreign object appears in the picture.

3. Robot accidents occur frequently, and humans should remain vigilant

The Verge stated that robot accidents are not uncommon due to lack of consideration by designers. Most industrial robots work "blindly". They are not equipped with sensors to identify the nearby environment and just move along a fixed path within a fixed time. That is to say, even if people or obstacles appear on their fixed movement path, they will continue to work along the original path, which is the cause of many robot accidents.

The first recognized death caused by a robot in the world occurred in 1979, when Robert Williams, a worker at a Ford factory, was crushed to death by a robot arm. According to the US Department of Labor, approximately one such robot accident occurs each year.

In 2015, a 22-year-old contractor at a Volkswagen factory in Germany was crushed to death by a robot against a metal plate. Between 2008 and 2013, there were also 144 deaths related to medical surgical robots. In 2018, 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg was hit and killed by an Uber self-driving car traveling at 40 miles per hour while crossing the street.

Foreign media The Guardian stated that the main reason for these accidents was human error. But regardless of the circumstances, humans should be wary of collaborating with robots.

Conclusion: When robots collaborate, human safety should be given top priority

The safety boundary between robots and humans has always been an important proposition.

Many people’s imagination of robots is futuristic and sci-fi, thinking that robots are advanced technologies with intelligence and emotions. As for the discussion of the safety boundary between robots and humans, the most well-known is the three rules that "robots must not harm humans" proposed by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in 1940.

But our current technological level is far from enough to create an artificial intelligence robot that can autonomously execute the three laws. Our top priority is how to make industrial, medical and other robots that have been used on a large scale work better for humans while ensuring human safety.

After all, before worrying about robots evolving intelligence and posing a threat to humans, it is more important to ensure that the current "idiot robots" will not harm humans.

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