Liability insurance carriers are now mandating that forklift fleets operating in shared-aisle warehouses install active Collision Avoidance Systems (CAS). These systems use a combination of LIDAR, ultrasonic sensors, and radar to detect pedestrians and automatically slow or halt the forklift. The problem isn't the technology; it's the environment, and it is killing productivity.
Warehouses are chaotic. Radar and LIDAR are incredibly precise, but they cannot differentiate between a human pedestrian and a hanging strip of plastic shrink-wrap blown by the HVAC system. They cannot tell the difference between a worker stepping into the aisle and a pallet of product overhanging its rack by three inches.
When the sensor detects an object in the "red zone," the system hard-brakes the truck and locks the hydraulics. Operators are experiencing dozens of "phantom stops" every shift because a rack beam is slightly bent, or a piece of cardboard is sticking out. These sudden stops jar the operator's back, destabilize the load, and destroy throughput. In high-throughput facilities, operators are secretly taping black electrical tape over the radar lenses or unplugging the sensors, completely defeating the safety system just so they can hit their pick rates. The industry is desperately trying to fix this with AI vision systems that can identify the shape of a human torso, but for now, radar in a cluttered warehouse is a massive operational headache.
