There shouldn’t be a cost barrier to making worksites safer. With FleetSafe’s Proxicam pedestrian detection system, you can keep your workers safe on the job no matter the size of your business
The driving force behind FleetSafe is the belief that safety should be affordable for businesses of any scale. This was the reason for developing Proxicam – a modular, easy to install and cost-efficient way to add a pedestrian proximity system to any machine.
Proxicam employs the latest in machine vision and AI object recognition to identify humans and track their proximity to a machine, alerting the operator to exclusion zone breaches.
Deployed across Australia from FleetSafe’s base in Sydney, managing director Clive Rogers says feedback on the Proxicam has been “fantastic”, with users commenting on the quick set-up that can be undertaken by the company’s internal staff, making it a true plug-and-play safety system that’s easy for operators to use.
“It’s a very simple premise – when a person steps into, or is detected within the pre-defined exclusion zone, the alarm goes off,” Rogers says.
“Therefore, from an operator perspective, it only takes a minute or so to get accustomed to the functionality and then have that additional peace of mind that they’ll be alerted when somebody is too close to the machine. And because it’s using AI to identify the people, it doesn’t require them to be wearing specific safety vests or RFID tags, reducing the potential for human error.”
Modular design
Proxicam can be configured to any size of fleet or any kind of mobile machinery. For smaller equipment like forklifts or skid steers, Proxicam’s base system includes a single smart camera and Detection Indicator which incorporates an LED and buzzer, providing visual and audible alerts to the operator.
For larger machines that can benefit from enhanced visibility to overcome blind spots, up to four smart cameras can be installed around the machine and connected to an LCD monitor in the cab – giving the operator a 360-degree view of their surroundings. When a pedestrian breaches the exclusion zone, the breach is highlighted on the display together with an audible warning.
To further enhance the system, Proxicam’s video and event recorder can be incorporated to capture and report on pedestrian breach events – storing high-definition video and vehicle telemetry data locally on the hard drive or accessed remotely by management via a web browser.
“You might have a machine on a remote site and there’s a pedestrian breach, the operator gets the alert in the cabin to overt the incident, but simultaneously a manager can be notified via SMS or email. They can log in remotely, watch the video and see exactly what’s happened,” Rogers says.
“Proxicam smart cameras are easy to configure, connecting via WiFi using just a smartphone. Detection zones are set by simply dragging the lines in the App to the required size, shape and location relative to the machine. And then locked so the operator can’t change it.”
Rogers says this gives fleet managers a high level of flexibility to adapt the Proxicam system to the different machines on a site, regardless of what they’re being used for and the configuration of the site itself.
“Sometimes you’ve got a skid steer that’s operating close to workers on foot, so you might have a 2m exclusion zone, but then you have an excavator on a big site, you might put a 3m or 4m zone, because of the size of the machine and the nature of the work it’s doing,” he says.
“The system can also be removed and refitted to a different machine and recalibrated.”
Affordable safety
When asked about the affordability of implementing camera systems onto machinery, Rogers says that it was important to FleetSafe that its safety solutions were available to all sizes of businesses, not just the larger end of the industry.
“Our unique selling point is that it’s really affordable, starting at $1,000 for a one-camera system,” he says.
“We thought to ourselves, why should the best safety products only be accessible to companies with big budgets? There are systems out there that cost $10,000 – it doesn’t need to be that costly with today’s access to AI and manufacturing processes.”
Proxicam comes with a three-year warranty for added backup.
“We’ve really worked to get the cost as low as possible because we want to be able to enhance the safety on every machine on every worksite across the world,” Rogers says.
“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have this kind of safety tech on a machine.”
Worksite requirements
As advanced technology becomes increasingly common on earthmoving machinery, safety systems such as pedestrian proximity sensors are starting to become mandatory for businesses such as BHP, which now requires all mobile assets on its Western Australian mine sites to be fitted with a system like Proxicam.
It’s not just on mine sites that the Proxicam is proving to be popular, with strong uptake also being seen in the civil and construction sectors. Worksites such as roadbuilding – which can be confined, with a lot of people in close proximity to machinery – particularly showcase Proxicam’s versatility.
“It’s because management can be very specific about where they set the exclusion zones on individual machines,” Rogers says.
“For example, with a profiler, it has an area where a person must be standing near it because their role requires them to be at that position. However, you don’t want people at other areas around the machine, so you can set those specific areas as exclusion zones.
“It brings a high level of specificity that is simple to set up and, at the end of the day, keep people safer.”
For more information on Proxicam and other safety systems provided by FleetSafe, visit: fleetsafe.com.au, email hello@fleetsafe.com.au or call 1800 227 548.