Toyota Material Handling’s Toyota Assist Enhances Safety and Situational Awareness
Toyota Material Handling announces Toyota Assist, a comprehensive suite of advanced features that reflect the company’s commitment to fostering a culture of safety. The Toyota-designed operator assist technologies included in this premiere package work both passively and actively to enhance operability, productivity, and situational awareness.
“Today more than ever, fleet managers are under increasing pressure to move product faster while keeping operators and pedestrians comfortable and safe,” said Tony Miller, senior vice president of operations, engineering & strategic planning. “The new and innovative suite of features included in Toyota Assist empowers customers with the ability to outperform normal productivity under the most challenging environmental conditions and situations with the most advanced safety technology on the market.”
The latest innovation featured in this unique package is the Smart Environment Sensor® + (SEnS+) technology that provides operators with pedestrian and object detection. This system, available on new Toyota forklift models, delivers visual and audible alerts when objects or pedestrians are detected within range, similar to pedestrian alerts found in the modern automobile driver assist technologies. SEnS+ limits the movement of the forklift by engaging regenerative braking.
A dynamic zoning feature automatically adjusts the detection range of obstacles in a 130-degree field of view up to 32 feet away based on the forklift's speed. This feature is complemented by a obstacle detection system – designed and engineered by Toyota – which uses stereoscopic vision technology to assist operators by differentiating between pedestrians and objects.
Toyota Assist also features the System of Active Stability, which engages instantly to stabilize the rear axle if the system senses the forklift is in a situation that could lead to instability. The EZ Control Joystick places all hydraulic controls, travel direction and horn button in a single, ergonomically designed handle, while a selection of adjustable cameras help operators keep an eye on their surroundings.
Additional innovative safety features such as Toyota’s Acu-Laser, Auto Height Select, Lift Logic, Load Weight Sensing Ground Level Monitoring, Object Detection Radar, and Compartment Sensing System are also included. For a complete and detailed listing of all the unique and advanced features of this package, visit the Toyota Assist resource page.
Learn more about how to enhance forklift operability and improve fleet performance with the Toyota Assist suite of features including the new and innovative SEnS+ pedestrian detection system, at ToyotaForklift.com.
About the Author
Michael Roth
Editor
Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.