A Chinese factory worker has survived being skewered with 10 metal spikes when a robot malfunctioned.
The 49-year-old, named as Mr Zhou, was working on the night shift at a porcelain factory in Hunan province when he was struck by a falling robotic arm.
The accident resulted in him being impaled with foot long, half-inch thick metal rods, the People’s Daily reported.
He was first taken to a local hospital before he was transferred to the Xiangya Hospital of Central South University due to the severity of his injuries.
Six steel rods fixed on a steel plate pierced his right shoulder and chest, and four penetrated elsewhere in his body.
During the operation, doctors found that one of the rods missed an artery by just 0.1mm. The rods also prevented doctors from carrying out X-rays before the operation.
“They were relatively big so there was no means of fitting the patient into the X-ray machine while the nails themselves could have caused interference with X-rays,” said Wu Panfeng, an associate professor of hand microsurgery.
Surgeons worked through the night to take out all of the rods in Mr Zhou’s body.
Picture: Imaginechina/REX/ShutterstockSource:Shutterstock
Picture: Imaginechina/REX/ShutterstockSource:Shutterstock
Picture: Imaginechina/REX/ShutterstockSource:Shutterstock
His condition is now described as stable and he will undergo treatment and physiotherapy to assist his recovery, and he is already able to move his right arm.
Mr Zhou was lucky not to suffer the same fate as American factory worker Wanda Holbrook. The maintenance technician was killed by rogue robot who had veered into the area she was working in and crushed her head.
The 57-year-old was inspecting machinery in an area where components were assembled when the robot “took Wanda by surprise, entering the section she was working in”, court documents filed at the time said.
In 2015, another car industry worker, this time in Germany, was also killed by a robot.
The unnamed 22-year-old man was part of a team that was setting up the stationary robot at a Volkswagen plant when it grabbed and crushed him against a metal plate.
Last year, a construction worker miraculously survived after he was electrocuted, thrown from his workstation and then impaled through the anus by a four-foot steel bar.
Yang Ming, 37, had accidentally touched live wires on a building site and the shock sent him flying backwards onto the protruding metal rod.
Rescuers left the pole inside and rushed him to hospital so surgeons could fish it out.
Ming had to undergo seven hours of surgery at the Sichuan University West China Hospital in Chengdu, capital of China’s southwestern Sichuan Province.
This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission
Replies
Tad Living : Nice one Tad. I found myself laughing that a robot went crazy and slammed a worker against a wall until I realized that the worker was killed. We are not safe in our own homes. I have been thinking of buying one of those robot floors cleaners but I will have to think carefully about it now. It could go crazy and grab my foot and tickle me to death!---there are worse ways to go I suppose?
Tad: I don`t have a dog now, but your clip has damped my desire for a robot cleaner never the less! I will have to think about it.
I bet he was trying to have some kind of sexual activity with it .
Please.......there are kids on this site.
Could have tied a rope round his ankle, thrown him in the boot of a cop car, and used him as road spikes if you threw him out face up....