From SCDigest's OnTarget e-Magazine
- March 14, 2012 -
RFID and AIDC News: New System Uses RFID Fobs to Warn Lift Truck Drivers in the DC When Pedestrians are Close
Solution from UK's Transmon Engineering Can Offer Visual/Audio Signals and/or Reduce Vehicle Speed
SCDigest Editorial Staff
In general, RFID has been slow to penetrate distribution center applications, especially in the US as opposed to Europe, for tracking of pallets and cases as they are moved around the facility.
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| The company notes one advantage of the system is that it discriminates between people and objects, whereas most accident avoidance systems do not.
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Perhaps the entre' to the market will come in some simpler applications, such as a new solution from a company called Transmon Engineering, which has released an interesting new solution design to reduce or prevent accidents between vehicles and workers or others in the facility walking on foot.
Using active RFID tags on each worker and manager, and potentially guest visiting the DC, the system involves placing RFID readers on fork trucks, pallet jacks, etc. that sense when a person is within a defined distance, and either slows down the vehicle, triggers warning signals, or both.
Transmon makes a variety of products to improve fork truck performance and safety, and the new Pedestrian Alert System is the latest in that line of solutions. It is intended to solve the "invisible man" problem, the company says in its press release announcing the product. It adds that in the UK alone, 40 such truck-person accidents occur in distribution centers each week.
With the system, workers and others in the DC wear an active RFID tag in a key fob type of format. Those battery powered tags pulse their signals multiple times per second, and are expected to be "long-lived," though the tag's lithium ion battery must be replaced about every two years. The fobs have an indicator that shows when the battery is getting weak. Drivers also where a similar RFID fob.
The readers on the fork truck will pick up those signals as the distance to the person reaches about 7 meters from the front and back and slightly shorter on the sides, which is considered less dangerous. At that point, any of several audible or visual warnings are triggered, and/or the trucks speed could automatically be slowed (though another Transmon system is required for that).
Interestingly, the system can also generate a user-forced signal from the key fob that will activate the warning from as far away as 25 meters, so that a DC "pedestrian" can make a driver aware of his or her presence if they have concerns about a potential accident or injury.
The company says the system is ideal for dangerous areas such as truck loading and unloading areas, and at the ends of aisles and cross ways where visibility is limited.
(RFID and AIDC Story Continued Below)
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