Every vendor in this category will tell you their system detects pedestrians near forklifts. The sales conversation rarely gets to the question that decides whether it works in your building: what is the signal made of, and what happens when a steel rack full of stock stands between the truck and the person?
Three different physics are sold under the same phrase. Sorting the market by that, rather than by brand, makes the shortlist obvious.
Magnetic field: sees through the rack
HIT-NOT generates a magnetic field around the truck in two configurable zones, warning and danger, detected by a Personal Alarm Device each pedestrian carries. Magnetic fields propagate through racking, loads and dense material, so a person hidden behind stock is detected before either party could see the other. Warning zone gives three beeps, danger zone a continuous signal, and facility-mounted units cover areas where nobody wears a tag.
If your incidents happen at blind corners created by the building rather than by inattention, this physics is the one that addresses the cause. See our HIT-NOT review.
Ultra-wideband: through obstacles, with geometry
UWB also penetrates obstacles, and adds precision about where something is rather than just how close.
ELOKON ELOshield programmes warning and protection zones as circles, symmetrical rectangles or asymmetric polygons, reaching about 12 m as standard and up to roughly 25 m extended, with different reactions per zone including automatic speed reduction. It tracks multiple pedestrians at once and runs on AGVs and cobots as well as trucks.
ALIS Tech uses UWB for traffic control rather than detection alone: two-phase deceleration, indoor and outdoor speed zones, narrow aisle management, gate control tied to how far a door has opened, and LED floor marking that lights when something moves.
Trio Mobil measures distance by UWB between a truck unit and a pedestrian tag, and between one truck and another, with danger zones, speed limits and alert thresholds set per site. The company describes a tag that vibrates and alarms for the pedestrian while the operator is alerted in the cab, fixed zone anchors that slow a truck as it enters a predefined area, and speed reduction in one or two phases near a person or another truck. It sells a forklift-mounted AI camera alongside for people who carry no tag. The UWB layer on its own, like every tag system on this page, sees only the tagged.
Litum and Wipelot offer further UWB and real-time location options, worth including where indoor positioning has operational value beyond safety.
RFID: simple, cheap, well proven
SensorZone and ZoneSafe both run RFID personnel tags with vehicle-mounted antennas giving 360 degree coverage. SensorZone publishes zones from about 1 m for an indoor forklift to 10 m for larger plant, tags lasting beyond three years, and installation in under an hour per vehicle, with alerts reaching the operator, the worker’s vibrating tag and a bystander beacon. ZoneSafe covers the same ground and extends into vehicle-activated signage for fixed hazards.
RFID is the most economical way to protect a stable, taggable workforce, and both vendors sell a camera layer for when that description stops being true.
The failure they all share
Every system on this page depends on the pedestrian carrying something. That is not a flaw in the engineering, it is the design, and it means the protection is exactly as reliable as your tag discipline. A visitor, a delivery driver or a contractor on their first morning is invisible to all of them.
There are three honest responses. Tag everyone including visitors, and accept the administration. Add a camera layer for the untagged, which is what the hybrid tiers exist for: SensorZone, ZoneSafe and Trio Mobil each sell one. Or choose vision-first detection and give up through-obstruction sensing. Our pedestrian detection page works through that trade-off, and our roundup of camera systems covers the vision side.
Matching physics to building
Heavy racking, deep blind corners, stable workforce: magnetic or UWB, because seeing through the obstruction is the whole point.
Irregular aisles where a circular zone would either nag or arrive late: UWB with programmable geometry.
Open floor, simple layout, everyone badged, cost sensitive: RFID does the job and installs fastest.
Chokepoints, gates and very narrow aisles: a traffic control system rather than a detection system.
Constant visitor traffic: no tag architecture alone will do, whatever the quote says.
One more practical note: tag form factor changes behaviour more than spec sheets admit. A badge-clip tag sits at chest height and a hard-hat tag at head height, which puts them in different parts of the detection field when somebody crouches to check a pallet label. Ask to trial both if your work involves people at floor level.
What to verify
Ask for detection measured on your truck with a loaded mast, since steel and stock change the field. Ask what the system does with two pedestrians arriving from different directions. Ask about tag battery life, replacement process and who owns it. And ask each vendor to state plainly what happens to an untagged person, then compare those answers rather than the range figures.
Run the risk scorer first so every supplier quotes the same site, the same aisle and the same truck count.
