Collision Avoidance
There are about 100,000 accidents involving forklifts every year in the US alone. These accidents lead to about 80 deaths annually.
ARINAlertTM provides an active mechanism to alert forklift operators to the presence of other forklifts and pedestrians around them.
This active mechanism of alerting adds an additional layer of protection to passive methods and processes such as separating fork truck and pedestrian traffic, installing stop lights and training people.
What does ARINAlert do
ARINAlert uses radio communication to determine the presence of forklifts or pedestrians. The reliance of ARINAlert on radio communications means the system is able to
* Detect Pedestrian or Forklifts within 200 milliseconds
* Measure distance between forklift and pedestrian or forklift to within 4 inches of actual
* Exposes Pedestrians and Forklift operators to very low levels of radiation. About 1 milliwatt compared to mobile phone power of at least 600milliwatt's.
The reliance on radio communication also means the system experiences limitations such as the inability to penetrate brick walls, metal or liquids.
How Reliable is ARINAlert
Other solutions are built around
* RFID
* Magnetic fields
RFID does not allow for precise calculations of distances. So it is very prone to false positives.
Magnetic fields will penetrate walls and other physical barriers which can cause false positives due to people on the other side of the physical barrier. The behavior of magnetic field based devices in a high electrical environment is unknown!
What other solutions are available?
ARINAlert comprises of Forklift units, Pedestrian units and Zoning units.
The forklift unit is attached to the forklift at an appropriate place on the forklift typically on the roll cage.
The pedestrian unit is carried with a pedestrian.
The Zoning unit is attached to fixed locations within the facility where the behavior of the forklift unit needs to be changed.
The forklift unit communicates with the pedestrian unit and the zoning units to determine the location of the forklift and the presence of a pedestrian around the forklift.
Alerts are provided to the forklift operator based on predefined conditions. These conditions can distance between forklift and pedestrian, speed of movement towards each other etc.
The Zoning units tell the forklift unit if there is a need to change the type of alert provided to the operator.
How does ARINAlert work
ARINAlert has been tested and is in use in multiple environments. The alerting system is used in industries ranging from chemical processing to metal working. It is used by companies in the manufacturing and warehousing space.
Users range from facilities that have 10 people to 500 people working in them!
ARINAlert is designed with flexibility in mind and so can easily adapt to any environment and facility and budget.
The alerting system allows for
* Ability to change warning and danger zones
* Ability to change alerting sequence
* Alerting mechanism - audio or visual
* DIY installation
* Remote monitoring of health of system
Lowest exposure to radiation compared to other systems. For example a cellular phone will expose a person to 600 times as much electromagnetic radiation and a magnetic field based warning system emits 15000 times the radiation as ARINAlert.
ARINAlert is patent pending.