Keeping the Forklift and Pedestrian Separate
Forklift warning systems are an essential part of any manufacturing, warehouse and distribution center today. But do these forklift warning systems work? According to the NSC, there were 7,290 nonfatal injuries involving days away from work in 2020. There are still plenty of injuries and fatalities going on, why are the forklift warning systems not working?
What is a Forklift Warning Systems?
Forklift warning systems are meant to reduce the risk of a forklift accident with pedestrians, other equipment or the facility itself. Most forklift warning systems are passive in nature, meaning, it will not provide enough notification before the forklift and pedestrian meet. Example of a passive forklift warning systems include blue lights, seat belts and RFID tagging. However, forklift warning systems that are active is where SIERA.AI’s forklift safety system comes in. Let’s take a look.
Active Forklift Warning Systems
The most advanced forklift monitoring system in the industry today include AI machine learning technology. This type of system allows for full autonomous movement. This means it can go anywhere in the facility, even in the darkest, deepest corners and the system will watch for pedestrians and objects and continuously record even if no cellular or WIFI is available. That’s a big statement as most systems require tape and guides to work. However, the S3 Pedestrian Detection System does exactly this.
An active forklift warning systems, or the S3 PDS, can ‘see’ what is going on around the forklift, report the danger to the forklift driver so action can be taken in enough time prior to a potential accident. And all this must happen in a fraction of a second.
S3 Pedestrian Detection System
Let’s talk about how this happens. The S3 PDS is a single or dual monitoring system, one located in the back and if needed, one located in the front of the forklift. These highly sensitive monitoring systems scans at 60ms searching for humans and objects. The information captured from the monitoring system is given to the ‘brains’ of the system where it already has learned what is a human and object. If AI determines it is a person, it provides a symbol of a human with an audio alert. If the AI technology determines it is an object such as boxes or other equipment, it will provide a symbol of a ‘box’ along with an audio warning.
What Happens Next?
As a proactive forklift safety solution, you have some decisions to make. As the S3 can warn the driver as far as 33 feet, you need to determine how much time you want to give your forklift drivers for a warning to appear. Is 10 feet or 5 feet enough? Whatever your determination based on your facility, just change the settings in the telemetry Dashboard.
One More Setting
Now you have one more decision to make before getting started with an AI system. As the forklift safety system goes about its day, it will be recording information. It will be capturing real-time information on near misses, and low, medium and high impacts. You next decision is on notification. When do you want to be notified about impacts the forklift experiences? All of them? A level 5 and above impact? Indicate the settings again, in the telemetry system and receive notifications on only those that you have interest in receiving.
Next Steps
Next, it’s time to get to know the S3 system. Start by viewing our videos and getting a demo by contacting us at sales@siera.ai. Then we’ll help you get to the next step.
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