Solutions by typePersonal safety
What if the driver never sees him?
From the cab, he does not exist
It is 19:10 on the tipping floor of a waste plant. The sun has gone and the floodlights are not on yet. Three machines are manoeuvring at once and a worker crosses between them in a dark jumper with a folder under his arm. He is going to say something to the loader driver. The loader is reversing. From the cab, against the light and through a dusty mirror, that man does not exist.
8 cameras across 7 sectors
This is how you ask for it
«Tell me if someone enters the machine area without a hi-vis vest, staff or visitor.»
Today nobody sees this until somebody shouts. And when it goes wrong there is no minor injury: there is a months-long absence, a machine sealed off, an investigation and a whole shift stopped giving statements. Before that there were twenty identical crossings that ended fine, and none of them is written down anywhere, because nobody files a report for having stepped aside. All that is left is a feeling that you have to be careful out there.
You decide once
Health and safety decides once where the machine area starts and at what hours it is active. In one sentence: if a person enters the tipping floor, for more than ten seconds, and is not wearing high-visibility clothing, then tell the shift supervisor, open the camera and keep the evidence. That is decided in one meeting. IRIS applies it the same on day one and on day two hundred.
A helmet protects you from what falls. A hi-vis vest protects you from nothing: it makes you visible. That is why it is the item people forget most, and the one they feel least guilty about forgetting, because taking it off never feels risky. And they are right: the risk is not in their head. It is in the head of the driver reversing with a load across half his view.
The day it goes wrong there is rarely a clear culprit. The operator looked and did not see. The person on foot assumed they had been seen. On a tipping floor, in a service corridor or at the lorry gate of a building site, the scene repeats itself: someone in grey crossing in front of thirty tonnes that needs twenty metres to stop. Nobody did anything strange. One of the two was simply invisible.
IRIS reads the colour and contrast of the scene and alerts when someone without high-visibility clothing is where machines are moving. It alerts at the gate, not once they have been inside for half an hour. And the same idea works in reverse: in a packed concourse, counting how many staff vests are inside tells you the point is short-handed before anything happens. A vest is not paperwork. It is the difference between being a person and being a shadow.
What changes
Before, the vest was checked at the morning briefing and never looked at again all day. If somebody walked in without one, it was spotted by chance. Now the supervisor gets the alert at the gate, with the camera open, while the person is still on the threshold and can turn back. And the monthly summary shows which entrances it happens at, and at what hour.
Where we have seen it
CAM-317Into the dosing room without the area kit
«Tell me if anybody goes into the dosing room without a hard hat, a vest and goggles.»
CAM-152No helmet in the plant walkway
«Tell me if anyone walks into the technical area without a helmet and a hi-vis vest, whether they work here or not.»
CAM-446He walks past the sign to the diesel tank with no helmet
«Tell me if anyone enters the fuel area or crosses towards the track without a helmet and a vest.»
CAM-438No helmet, no gloves, bare hand on the belt
«Tell me if somebody starts sorting on the belt without helmet, gloves or hi-vis.»
CAM-413No hard hat, no hi-vis, right at the edge of the open tank
«Tell me if anyone works at the edge of a basin without a hard hat or a vest.»
CAM-493A packed concourse and two hi-vis vests in the whole shot
«Tell me if the concourse goes over nine hundred people and there are fewer than three staff vests inside.»
CAM-51Walking into the site with no helmet
«Tell me if somebody turns up at the turnstile with no helmet or no vest, and tell me there, at the gate, not once he has been inside the site for half an hour.»
What it does not do
IRIS cannot tell a certified garment from one that merely looks like it, does not check visibility classes, and does not know if the fabric is too dirty to reflect any more. It sees whether someone is wearing high-visibility clothing or not.
And in very low light with no floodlights it may not see it at all. Before accepting a night-time rule, look at that camera at that hour.
Questions
- Does it work at night or in poor light?
- Yes, provided the camera can see the scene. Under floodlights, reflective clothing stands out even better at night than by day. In a completely dark scene, it does not. That is why the camera goes where there is light and where people pass head-on: the gate, the turnstile, the point everyone must cross. Looking at that camera at that specific hour takes five minutes and prevents launching a rule that will not hold.
- Can it count how many vests are in an area?
- Yes, and in a venue with an audience it is one of the most useful things it does. Knowing there are nine hundred people in the concourse and only two staff vests among them says, with nothing to argue about, that the point is short-handed before anything happens. It is a number, not an impression, and it can be read by hour and by door. That moves people in time instead of explaining it the next day.
- Is this for disciplining people?
- No, and using it that way ruins it. IRIS identifies nobody: it does not recognise faces and does not know who the person in the frame is. It sees someone without a vest where one is required and alerts in time for them to put one on. The point is for them to walk in wearing it, not to open a file. The day people believe the camera is there to catch them, it stops doing the one thing it is good for.
- Can it apply only in some areas and at certain hours?
- Yes, and it is the sensible way to do it. Vests are not needed across the whole site: they are needed where machines move. The zone is drawn once on the image and given the hours when there is activity. Outside that zone and that window, IRIS says nothing. A rule that fires where it should not soon ends up ignored, and an ignored rule protects nobody at all.
Demo · IRIS at work
A new case each time. Always the same screen.
It plays by itself and shows one case from start to finish. It is a summary: the real screen has far more functions than fit in this box.
- Cameras on the map
- You draw an area
- What passed shows up
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 already record.The hard part was always watching it.
Years of video that only get opened once something has gone wrong. IRIS understands those same images as they arrive, so the answer no longer lives only in the archive.
Tell us your problem and we will say whether IRIS understands it, or not yet.
We reply the same working day.