Most proximity systems give you a radius. Set it too tight and the warning arrives after the operator needed it; set it too wide and the system alarms every time somebody walks down the next aisle. A circle is a poor description of a hazard that is actually shaped like an aisle, a dock or an intersection.
ELOKON’s answer is to let you draw the zone properly, and for sites with awkward geometry that is the reason to shortlist ELOshield.
Zones, ranges and reactions
ELOshield defines two nested areas: a Warning zone and, inside it, a Protection zone. Each can be programmed as a circle, as a symmetrical rectangle, or optionally as an asymmetric polygon. The last option is the one that matters in a narrow aisle, where the risk in front of the truck and the risk to its side are not the same distance.
Standard detection reaches about 40 ft, or 12 m, with an option to extend to roughly 80 ft, or 25 m. Each zone can trigger a different reaction, so entering the outer area might sound an alarm while entering the inner one automatically reduces vehicle speed. That gradation is what separates a warning device from something that changes the outcome, and the same principle underpins our guide to the forklift speed limiter.
The sensing is ultra-wideband radio, which detects pedestrians through pallets and racking without line of sight, and the company is explicit that it does so without the false alarms that plague less selective radio systems. Multiple pedestrians can be tracked at once. Alerts reach people through sound, light and vibration.
Mobile and stationary
ELOshield mounts on the truck, but there is also a stationary version installed at fixed points to watch a permanent hazard such as a high-traffic aisle intersection. Being able to protect a place as well as a machine is genuinely useful, because some of your risk is geographic and does not move.
The wider ELOKON range extends to ELOprotect for very narrow aisle pedestrian safety and ELOfleet for fleet management, so detection can stay separate from telematics or be bought together. The company is German, headquartered at Tornesch, with operations in the United States, the United Kingdom and Poland.
Where it fits
Mixed fleets, explicitly. ELOKON positions the system as OEM-independent and retrofittable to any brand and any age of truck, which is the practical reality of most warehouses. It also runs on AGVs, robots and cobots, so a site mixing manual and automated handling can put both on the same detection scheme rather than running two.
It fits best where the hazard geometry is irregular and where you want intervention, not just notification.
Where it does not
It is still a tag-based architecture, and the failure mode is the familiar one: a person not carrying a transponder is not detected. Visitor-heavy sites should either add a camera layer or choose a vision-first system.
Zone programmability also implies zone maintenance. Someone has to own those shapes and revisit them when the racking is rearranged or a dock is repurposed, or the carefully drawn polygon slowly stops describing the site.
Six alternatives worth quoting
HIT-NOT achieves the through-obstruction property with magnetic fields rather than UWB, with a simpler two-zone model and a long track record. See our HIT-NOT review.
SensorZone uses RFID tags with vibration and a bystander beacon, publishes zone sizes from about 1 m indoors to 10 m outdoors, and offers a tag-plus-camera tier for untagged visitors.
ALIS Tech overlaps hardest on zone behaviour. It also does two-phase deceleration, indoor and outdoor speed zones, and adds LED floor marking and gate control, which is worth a call if narrow aisles and doorways are your specific problem.
Blaxtair is the vision alternative, detecting people without tags at the cost of needing line of sight. See our Blaxtair review.
Speedshield sells zone speed enforcement as its own module, pairing a speed limiter with a sensor that detects indoor and outdoor transitions from the ceiling, which is a cheaper route to zoning where your policy follows the building.
Litum is a further UWB option worth adding for price comparison.
What to verify
Ask to see a polygon zone configured for one of your own aisles during the trial, not a demo rig. Confirm the extended range option is available on the hardware being quoted rather than a different model. Ask what the automatic speed reduction requires from your truck manufacturer, because any intervention needs the OEM to expose that control. And establish who owns zone configuration after handover.
Use the risk scorer to fix the pilot area and to send every supplier the same scope.
