This is a “truly embarrassing” article for Elon Musk. On Tuesday, November 26, the Daily Mail reported on the injury of a Tela employee at the automaker’s assembly plant in Austin, Texas. On the British site, the information is presented as a robot “attack” during a violent malfunction.
But what is it really? Because if Elon Musk has specialized in criticizing media coverage of his activities, was the head of Tesla, SpaceX or X (Twitter) right to complain?
A “trace of blood” on the ground
According to the Daily Mail, the scene is worthy of a Terminator movie. A machine that was supposed to move aluminum parts allegedly hit an employee, before two “horrified” witnesses. Those present had to activate an emergency stop button to help their colleague. At the scene, the newspaper explains that the attack left a “trail of blood” on the ground.
The story was told thanks to a report of the incident, seen by the Daily Mail, sent to Travis County authorities and federal regulators in the United States. The alleged attack took place in 2021.
But very quickly, the article mentions a hand injury. An injury that actually seems minor, since the employee was able to return to work without days off. Which is much less impressive than the report’s description: “laceration, cut, open wound.”
Above all, the article does not make clear which object is causing the damage. Sometimes a machine, sometimes a robot, the image associated with the article shows an image of the Optimus Tesla humanoid robots. Although a new version of these robots was presented in mid-December, the Daily Mail headline associated with the image of Optimus suggests the rebellion of an autonomous robot.
A simple human error
In reality, the case is much less juicy. The author of the alleged attack is a Kuka robot, as revealed by Elon Musk. These robotic arms allow repetitive tasks to be performed instead of people, particularly moving objects on an assembly line.
Elon Musk denounces the twist in the Daily Mail article which “suggests that (the incident, Editor’s note) is due to an Optimus robot.” The businessman’s publication is a response to an Internet user who points out that an attack “implies that the robot has made a decision.”
However, here the employee intervened in a risk area and forgot to deactivate the robotic arm. Therefore, the tool continued to perform the movement for which it was programmed and struck the Tesla engineer.
Therefore, the incident is not the materialization of a science fiction scenario in real life, but simply a human error. The mishap still allowed Elon Musk’s anger to be legitimized.
Source: BFM TV
