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Robert Williams was just 25 when he tragically became the first person in the world to be killed by a robot. ‌

He was employed at the Ford Motor Company casting plant in Flat Rock, Michigan and on January 25, 1979, he met his untimely death while working with a parts-retrieval system. The machine was designed to transport castings and other materials around the factory, but it's believed that a malfunction had occurred as the machine seemed to be operating slowly. ‌

Williams decided to climb into the third story of a shelving unit, where he was then "struck from behind and crushed" by a mechanical arm, according to legal documents. It appears the robotic system failed to recognise Williams as a human and instead registered him as an inanimate object that needed t

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