Robert Williams (robot fatality)

Robert Williams (May 2, 1953 – January 25, 1979) was an American engineer who was the first known human to be killed by a robot.

A worker at a Ford Motor Company factory in Flat Rock, Michigan, Williams was killed by an industrial robot arm on January 25, 1979. Williams died instantly when he was struck in the head and killed by the arm of a 1-ton production-line robot as he was gathering parts in a storage facility, where the robot also retrieved parts. The robot was part of a parts-retrieval system that moved material from one part of the factory to another; when the robot began running slowly, Williams reportedly climbed into the storage rack to retrieve parts manually when he was struck in the head and killed instantly. His family sued the manufacturers of the robot, Litton Industries, for a total of $15 million dollars, the court concluded that there simply were not enough safety measures in place to prevent such an accident from happening. He would go down in history as the first recorded human death by robot.

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