How Does Real-Time Forklift Tracking Work?

Forklift tracking has evolved in its meaning. Forklift tracking was equated with finding the location of the forklift within the facility. Today, forklift tracking can include unauthorized user access, identity of the driver in an impact or a forklift inspection failure to name a few. To allow forklift tracking to be beneficial to your organization, you require the information to be real-time, or instantaneous so you can get a more thorough understanding of the situation that just occurred.

How Does Real-Time Tracking Work on Mobile Equipment?

Mobile equipment is one of the hardest to track. That’s because there isn’t a pattern that the forklifts or other mobile equipment follow. It depends on the task at hand and other variables that can interrupt the current flow.

SIERA.AI S3 Pedestrian Detection or S3 PDS is a unique solution that operates autonomously, meaning, it is not reliant on any tags or reading devices hanging from various places in the facility. Each S3 PDS unit acts independently situated on individual forklifts in the same or different facilities. But that’s where the individuality ends. As each unit scans and collects data, it transmits the findings to the same, centralized telemetry Dashboard.

RFID Systems

We’ve come a long way from relying on RFID tags. Before SIERA.AI’s forklift monitoring system with machine learning AI technology, some companies tried out RFID Systems. This works by installing a tag on each vehicle that transmits a signal to units installed on ceilings or racking systems. The unit transmits a signal to RTLS servers and calculates the whereabouts of the forklift. A solution that was good for the times, or prior to machine learning AI technology, it started to provide some insights. However, this didn’t stop accidents from occurring in the entire facility. Areas were left undetected and people coming into the facility could be untagged.

Machine Learning AI

Today, machine learning artificial intelligence or AI is providing greater insights into the most difficult of places. The reason for the word ‘learning’ is because of the collection of information and what it does with it. For instance, once it begins to scan and understand its environment, it can begin to learn what a ‘person’ is by its shape and structure regardless if the person is tall or short or any other attributes. If it doesn’t conform to the data that it collects that identifies it as a human, it will then determine if it is an ‘object’.

The beauty of the SIERA.AI S3 PDS system is the collective learning from all of the facilities as it scans. The system only gets smarter and more refined as customers use the system.

Real-Time Tracking Captured

Let’s say you have the S3 PDS installed on your forklifts. As soon as the forklift driver’s badge is scanned and a forklift digital inspection is completed, the forklift is off and running. As soon as it begins to move, the S3 PDS begins scanning every 60ms. The forklift monitoring system begins to communicate any near hits or near misses, low, medium or high impacts directly to the telemetry Dashboard.

You can sit there are watch the Dashboard communicate what it’s finding are in real-time all day, or you can tell the Dashboard to notify you when any near hits, forklift failures or impacts occur. When the forklift monitoring system reports an impact to the system, it immediately notifies you or others of the situation.

Settings

Settings are an important aspect to forklift tracking. Here, you can determine when a forklift driver should be notified that an impact may happen if it doesn’t change its course of action. In the Dashboard, you can set the distance for notification. You can set it as far as 33’. When do you want the driver to be notified? That’s up to you.

The next setting is G force. How do you want impacts measured? Is a 2G a low impact or medium impact? What about 5G or 8G? These setting are made for you to determine how you want to track and when you want to be notified.

Summary

Forklift tracking is an important part of today’s manufacturing and warehouse mobile equipment solutions in order to keep you, your workers and facility safe. Get a trial today to ‘see’ for yourself how it operates and helps you achieve zero accidents. Contact us at sales@siera.ai today to get an S3 system working for you.