Report: Robot arm ‘attack’ at Tesla plant left engineer injured, ‘trail of blood’

A Tesla manufacturing robot “attacked” an engineer at a Texas factory in 2021, leaving the man bloodied and witnesses to the event in shock, according to a report.

>> Read more trending news

The incident took place at the Tesla Gigafactory based in Austin, according to a report filed with regulators. The story came to light last week when the website The Information published a report about it.

The incident happened when an engineer started to work on three robot arms but didn’t realize that only two had been shut off, The Information reported.

As he was working on a software update, the third robotic arm kept moving and “pinned the engineer against a surface.” The robot’s claw dug into the worker’s back and arm, leaving him with an open wound on his left hand, The Information reported, citing two unnamed witnesses.

One of the other workers in the area pushed an emergency stop button and the engineer was able to get out of the grasp of the robot’s arm. He fell into a scrap metal chute, trailing blood behind him, according to the story.

Tesla has not yet responded to a request for comment from The Information, Fortune and other media outlets, but the company’s owner, Elon Musk, commented on the story via X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Truly shameful of the media to dredge up an injury from two years ago due to a simple industrial Kuka robot arm (found in all factories) and imply that it is due to Optimus now,” Musk wrote in the X post on Wednesday.

The Optimus is Tesla’s humanoid robot. The accident in Texas involved a Kuka robot arm that is used in manufacturing automobiles there.

The incident happened on Nov. 10, 2021, according to Tesla’s Form 300 report to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The company is legally required to report any on-the-floor injuries at its manufacturing plants.

According to Fortune, OSHA inspected Tesla’s Austin factory once a year in 2021 and 2022. Tesla’s Fremont, California, factory was inspected nine times each year in 2021 and 2022, and four so far in 2023, the outlet reported.

Tesla has seen other workplace incidents over the past few years, and in 2020, California regulators said Tesla had sent them incomplete factory injury reports.

In a memo sent to Tesla at the time, Cal/OSHA warned the company that it found it had repeatedly failed to mention injuries at its main assembly plant in reports to the state. At least 36 injuries were left out of Tesla’s records in 2018 alone, the memo, reviewed by Business Insider, showed.

The Workers Defense Project, a non-profit labor organization, filed a suit against Tesla in 2022 alleging that the company was not doing enough to provide sufficient safety training to employees.