Here’s a snapshot of the top three China forklift market technology trends we identified during our roll-out of the VIA Mobile360 Forklift Safety System last year. We expect that these trends will further accelerate as we expand adoption of the system in the year ahead.
EV Forklifts Gaining Momentum
The popularity of EV forklifts is gathering pace in the China forklift market as the price and performance of the machines approach parity with combustion engine forklifts and environmental sustainability becomes a greater concern. Even though combustion engine forklifts still comprise the vast majority of the market, over half of our projects are for EV forklift installations and we expect to see this proportion to continue to increase this year ahead.
To expand the system’s support for different EV models, we plan to introduce an external DC-DC converter with an input voltage range of up to 96V in the first quarter. As the number and diversity of our installations grows, we are also gaining much greater experience in identifying the usable power sources on the many different EV forklifts available on the market.
Dedicated AI Models Forging Ahead
Given the complexity of the factory, warehouse, and port environments that forklifts operate in, the development of dedicated AI models for the target use cases is essential. Adaptations of generic ADAS algorithms originally designed for use in passenger vehicles come nowhere close to meeting the stringent perception demands of busy workspaces with people and goods moving in all directions.
Ensuring that our people detection algorithms can work effectively in such demanding conditions where the lighting, facilities, equipment, and traffic can vary so greatly requires intensive training using real-world and simulated scenarios and constant enhancement of the underlying datasets. Tight integration of the hardware and the algorithms is also vital in order to ensure optimum performance of the system.
Cloud Integration Gathering Steam
Our customers in China see our VIA WorkX Connect Cloud Management Service as a powerful way of capturing critical operational data that they have never been able to gather before. The ability to analyze the data on the cloud not only gives them a more comprehensive understanding of their overall operations but also enables them to develop granular insights into specific processes and scenarios.
In addition to collecting data about safety incidents and driver behavior, the service allows managers to, for example, track the utilization of forklifts in order optimize the allocation of limited driver and vehicle resources more efficiently.
As we continue to enhance the functionality and performance of the system, we are committed to accelerating innovation in forklift safety to meet ever more diverse and sophisticated customer needs.
To learn more about the the VIA Mobile360 Forklift Safety System, please click below.
