Hyster Launches Pedestrian Detection Event Dashboard to Enhance Safety
Hyster announces the launch of a pedestrian detection event dashboard, which uses data from the company’s award-winning Hyster Reaction pedestrian awareness camera system to track pedestrian presence near a lift truck in both indoor and outdoor applications. The dashboard is available free of charge to operations that already use the pedestrian awareness camera and the advanced tier of the Hyster Tracker wireless verification telemetry solution.
The pedestrian detection event dashboard tracks when pedestrians get within approximately 6, 10 or 16 feet of a lift truck. This information enables operations to reduce the risk of pedestrian- and lift truck-related accidents by adjusting pedestrian boundaries, having discussions with operators or taking other actions.
The camera system was developed using extensive real-world photographic data and adapts to various lighting and environmental conditions to track for physical human features, increasing tracking accuracy and allowing the system to catalog:
· The total and average number of detection events per day and per truck.
· The number of detection events by how close pedestrians get to the truck.
· The location of detection events in relation to the truck.
· The number of events that occurred when the truck was moving or stationary.
· The date and time of each event.
“Demanding materials handling applications are already characterized by harsh conditions and businesses can’t afford the added safety risk of improper operator behavior,” said Clay Hendricks, global telemetry product manager, Hyster. “This dashboard equips operations with the information they need to address safety concerns, keep crews moving and deliver the high efficiency and productivity they require day in and day out.”
The pedestrian awareness camera solution, which collects the data for the dashboard, can accurately identify pedestrians at ranges up to 16 feet through a 110-degree field of view and provides automatic alerts to the lift truck operator when a pedestrian is detected. Operations can get the camera system with audible and visual alerts only, or with optional traction alerts.
The audible and visual alerts use a tone sequence to communicate pedestrian proximity and a light to indicate which zone the pedestrian is in on the truck-mounted operator remote. Optional traction alerts automatically and gradually slow down the lift truck, encouraging lift truck operators to take action to avoid the detected pedestrian by slowing down, steering away or both.
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.