Computer vision is software that interprets camera images, using trained models to recognise objects such as people, forklifts, safety vests or hard hats and to locate them in the frame.
In forklift safety, computer vision is the engine behind tagless pedestrian detection, PPE detection and AI video analytics. A model trained on many labelled images draws a box around each person or vehicle it finds, and the system then applies rules: a person inside the warning zone of a moving truck, a pedestrian in a forklift-only aisle, a worker without a vest. Processing can run on the truck or on a server receiving fixed-camera feeds.
A vision model is only as good as its view and its training data. It misses what the camera cannot see, struggles in poor light, glare, fog or steam, and can misclassify unusual shapes, partly hidden people or reflective surfaces. Accuracy claims from a test set do not transfer automatically to your site, so run a pilot and count missed detections as well as false alerts. Recording images of workers also creates privacy duties. The AI forklift safety guide explains where vision fits and where it does not.