Solutions by typePersonal safety
What if the operator cannot see him?
On foot where the cab cannot see
It is 08:05 on the tipping floor of a waste plant. A loader is filling, a dumper is waiting its turn and a tracked machine is slewing on the spot. A man on foot crosses between the three of them, a sheet of paper in his hand, looking for the supervisor. Not one of the three cabs can see him. It takes him eleven seconds to come out the other side. All eleven go fine.
5 cameras across 4 sectors
This is how you ask for it
«Tell me if someone on foot enters the yard while machines are manoeuvring.»
This happens fifteen times a day and is written down nowhere. Nobody notes it because nothing happened, and the operator never even learns he was two metres from someone. When it finally does happen, the cost is not up for debate: a person in hospital, the plant stopped, the labour inspectorate on site and an investigation that starts by asking for that day’s video. The video exists. Nobody had ever watched it.
You decide once
The plant decides once where the machine area begins, when it is live and what happens when someone walks into it. If a person on foot is inside the yard, at any moment, and machinery is working, then the alert sounds in the cabin, that camera opens and it is recorded with the time. The rule is written once, in a half-hour meeting, and it applies just the same on Monday morning as at seven on a Saturday evening.
An excavator has a blind spot the size of a car. Three people fit behind a loaded dumper and show up in neither the mirrors nor the reversing camera. The operator is not reckless: he simply cannot see what is there. And the person on foot knows it, and crosses anyway, because going round is two hundred metres and he has a docket to hand over.
The day it goes wrong there is no screech of brakes. In a quarry, a dumper reverses towards the edge of the bench. On a tipping floor, a loader slews with the boom full. On a site, a tracked machine shifts two metres to reposition. Two metres are enough. The accident does not happen at speed: it happens in a slow manoeuvre, with someone behind who assumed he had been seen.
IRIS watches the whole yard from above, and from there is no blind spot. It sees when machines are working and when a person on foot enters that same space, and it says so while the person is still crossing, not afterwards. It also keeps count: how many times a day someone walks across that yard, at what hour and along which line. With that, the walkway gets painted where people actually walk, instead of where it looked tidy on the drawing.
What changes
Before, the way to know whether people were crossing where they should not was to stand at the gate one morning and watch. It was done twice a year and produced a report full of impressions. Now every crossing is counted, with its time and its path, and by the end of the month the plan shows that nearly all of them go through the same point: the shortcut to the parts store. That is where the barrier goes, not at the far end of the yard.
Where we have seen it
CAM-180Person on foot among machines
«Tell me if anyone walks into the yard while machines are manoeuvring.»
CAM-389A dump truck reversing to the very edge of the bench
«Tell me when a truck reverses past the edge markers, before it tips.»
CAM-429A man on foot between three machines that cannot see him
«Alert me if there is a person on foot on the tipping floor while the machinery is working.»
CAM-52Bare-headed among the machines
«Tell me when somebody walks across the area where the machines are working without a helmet on, and tell me while he is crossing — there is no second chance there.»
CAM-388A worker on foot between a truck and a loader
«Tell me the moment anyone is on foot in the machine area of the yard, even briefly.»
What it does not do
IRIS does not measure the exact distance between person and machine, and does not know whether the operator saw them. It sees that both are in the same yard while the machine is working.
And it does not act on the machine: it does not brake, it does not cut power and it does not decide. The alert goes to a person, and braking is decided by whoever is driving. That line is deliberate.
Questions
- Can IRIS stop the machine?
- No. The alert goes wherever you send it: to the control room, to a phone, to a beacon or to a screen in the yard itself. What IRIS does not do is touch the machine: it does not brake, it does not cut power and it does not decide. It alerts, and whoever is driving decides. That line is deliberate, because a machine that stops by itself at the wrong moment is a risk too, sometimes a bigger one.
- Does it work at night and in dust?
- Yes, provided the camera can see the yard, and that gets checked before the rule is accepted. A well-lit yard at night works; a cloud of dust against the light at midday can hide a person exactly as it hides them from the operator. That is why the camera goes high, facing the yard square on, and why you watch a real working day before trusting it in the dark.
- Can it count how often someone crosses on foot?
- Yes, and it is what actually fixes the yard. A single alert gets mentioned and forgotten; the same count over a month shows which point nearly everyone uses, at what hour and coming from where. With that you decide where the barrier goes, where the walkway goes and when it is worth pausing manoeuvres. The count is set up by drawing the line on the image, not by describing it in words.
- Do people need to carry a device?
- No. IRIS works with what the camera sees, so it covers the in-house operator, the driver stepping down from the lorry and the sales rep who came for a visit alike. That is exactly the gap left by wearable tags: they work for whoever is wearing one, and the person walking across a yard where they should not be is almost never the one wearing it, and the camera does not need one.
A different case every time
Watch what happens. Then watch what IRIS does with it.
Not a recorded video and not a drawing: it is a summary of the real tool, with a different case each time round. The whole tool does not fit in a box.
- You ask
- IRIS searches
- It shows you
Not seeing yours here?
These words are the ones we have built, not the ones IRIS understands. The list falls short on purpose: you ask for it in a sentence, and sentences do not run out. Tell us what is in front of your cameras and we will tell you whether it understands it, or not yet.
And the best part
You decide the rule onceand it is applied the same way every time.
At three in the morning it means what it means at noon, on camera one and on camera four thousand. It does not depend on who is on shift, or how tired they are.
Tell us your problem and we will say whether IRIS understands it, or not yet.
We reply the same working day.