New Delhi: On Wednesday, 25-year-old Akshay Lal was killed by a robot at an auto parts maker’s plant in Manesar. The worker apparently moved too close to the robot while adjusting a metal sheet that had come unstuck, according to a Times of India report.

The incident, however, is not an isolated one and is in fact a global menace.

Just about a month ago, a 22-year-old man was killed at a Volkswagen car factory in Germany. The worker died from injuries he sustained when he was trapped by a robotic arm and crushed against a metal plate.

According to the US government data, as many as 26 workplace deaths have happened in that country alone in the past 30 years due to accidents with robots, the London Telegraph reported on 2 July.

The first recorded robot-related death took place in 1971 at a Ford car production line in Michigan. Assembly line worker Robert Williams was killed when a robot arm slammed into him as he was gathering parts in a store.

The second known case happened in Japan in 1981, when Kenji Urada, an engineer at a Kawasaki factory, was pushed into a grinding machine by a broken robot he was working on. It was later found that Urada had failed to turn off the robot completely.

The use of robots has increased over the years as they are cheaper and considered more reliable than humans; they do not belong to trade unions, neither do they need pay raises nor holidays.

At the auto parts factory where Lal was working, there are 118 robots compared with 700 workers.

On average, automation levels at car factories in India have gone up to 50% of the entire manufacturing process. Maruti Suzuki India Ltd is the only company in India with more than 60% automation levels at its plants in Gurgaon and Manesar.

Market leader Maruti’s three production lines in Mehsana, Gujarat (scheduled to be operational in 2017) will be 95% automated with at least 800 robots deployed on the shop floor, Mint reported in 2012. The scenario is no different at highly-advanced factories of companies including Hyundai Motor India Ltd and Volkswagen India.

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