Safety in Emerging Technologies for Lift Trucks
A recent article in Safety & Health magazine discussing advanced technologies such as nanotechnology had a great quote. It said, ““A technology cannot be responsibly developed if worker safety is not a priority.” This quote can be taken the workers who are working with the technology itself, but in our space of forklift safety, the quote hits home. Safety in emerging technologies is crucial. SIERA.AI started working on our forklift safety system about 10 years ago by an engineer. He didn’t use the current technologies at the time, namely RFID, he used what was coming… Artificial Intelligence or AI. He ended up building much of it on his own as finding AI technology developers was slim. The vision of forklift safety was there…and continues to be the sole focus to this day.
Safety in Emerging Technologies
Safety in emerging technologies is moving faster than ever. As AI has come to play a more critical role in forklift safety, AI has now played a pivotal role in shaping how we protect the operators of forklifts and the workers that are around them. SIERA.AI had this vision and executed on it over the years in order to bring the various levels of forklift safety based on the company’s ability to embrace safety currently.
Digital Checklist and Impact Detection
These two go together as a good introduction into forklift safety system technologies. First, you are moving from the stoic paper based forklift safety checklist to a digital solution. Getting rid of the paper gets rid of the ‘gut feeling’ and puts real data to it. All of the answers and notes that can be added are collected and reported to an online telemetry Dashboard where the data can be analyzed and actions can be taken based on the results.
Impact detection is just that…tracking and measuring impacts of the forklift. It’s not stopping it at this point, or avoiding it, it is just tracking. Some customers just want this type of solution as they want the issues identified, located with our GPS system and dealt with. You set the threshold for impacts and analyze the results in the Dashboard.
Pedestrian Detection and Object Detection
This is where safety in emerging technologies shine with our AI. No wearables, no repeaters hanging off the ceiling or racks. Each forklift acts as its own entity scanning with intelligent scanners or cameras every 60ms as it moves about the facility. The difference? AI is identifying when a person or object comes within a pre-defined distance and begins to warn the forklift operator with audio and visual alerts. You still get the digital checklist and impact detection, but this takes it a step further with warnings.
One of the best parts of safety in emerging technologies is how our AI technology is able to identify a human with just 2 fingers, a foot, or an elbow. This is our partial detection. As you can imagine, this will happen many times. Someone behind a stack of boxes, or a pallet, or on all fours inside of a racking system. That’s the power of safety in emerging technologies with AI.
AutoSlow to a Safe Stop
Some facilities have incredibly busy areas and installing speed control is only going to stop or slow down their productivity. They need a system that can automatically slow the forklift down for those operators that are a bit aggressive and take risks. If the driver fails to adhere to the warnings, then the AI technology begins to slow the forklift down automatically. This doesn’t have to be installed on every machine. You can install a variety of our solutions based on the need of the area.
Contact Us!
Contact us today at sales@siera.ai or call us at (512) 817 0702.