A CHINESE factory worker has survived being skewered with TEN metal spikes when a robot malfunctioned.

The 49-year-old, named as Mr Zhou, was working on the night shift at a porcelain factory in Hunan province when he was struck by a falling robotic arm.

The accident resulted in him being impaled with foot long, half-inch thick metal rods, the People's Daily reported.

He was first taken to a local hospital before he was transferred to the Xiangya Hospital of Central South University due to the severity of his injuries.

Six steel rods fixed on a steel plate pierced his right shoulder and chest, and four penetrated elsewhere in his body.

During the operation, doctors found that one of the rods missed an artery by just 0.1mm.

The rods also prevented doctors from carrying out X-rays before the operation.

"They were relatively big so there was no means of getting fitting the patient into the X-ray machine while the nails themselves could have caused interference with X-rays," said Wu Panfeng, an associate professor of hand microsurgery.

Surgeons worked through the night to take out all of the rods in Mr Zhou's body.