What Is a Pedestrian Detection System?

A pedestrian detection system watches the area around a vehicle, recognises people in it and acts before the vehicle reaches them. The same idea appears in two worlds. In cars, it is part of the driver assistance that triggers automatic emergency braking when someone steps into the road. In warehouses, factories, ports and construction sites, it is fitted to forklifts, reach trucks, tuggers, AGVs and plant, where vehicles and people share the same aisles and yards.

Every system follows four steps: sense, detect, decide and act. Each step has to finish in a fraction of a second, because a forklift at walking pace covers more than a metre each second.

Each sensor type has strengths, and many systems combine two. The main difference is whether the sensor can tell a person from a pallet, a racking upright or a wall.

Simple proximity sensors react to anything nearby, which leads to false alarms that operators learn to ignore. AI camera systems recognise people specifically, so they react to the real hazard and keep working through changing layouts and traffic. Pairing them with radar or LiDAR covers poor visibility, which is the case for sensor fusion.

Collisions between lift trucks and people are among the most serious workplace transport accidents, and the UK Health and Safety Executive’s guidance on workplace transport puts segregation of people and vehicles first. Pedestrian detection does not replace walkways, barriers and training. It adds a layer for the places where people and vehicles still meet, such as junctions, loading bays, blind corners and reversing.

Driverless vehicles need it as well. An AGV following a fixed route stops when its safety scanner sees an obstruction, but AI cameras let it slow early for a person rather than brake hard for every box. Safety-rated laser scanners remain the certified stop function on driverless vehicles, with AI cameras adding recognition on top.

A good installation starts with a site survey. Mount cameras where the mast, load and counterweight do not block the view, set warning and danger zones to suit each truck’s speed and stopping distance, and adjust them for areas such as goods-in, where people work close to vehicles by design. Then test with staff walking real routes, including reversing and turning at junctions, before the system goes live.

In road vehicles, pedestrian detection is part of advanced driver assistance. A forward camera, often combined with radar, detects pedestrians and cyclists and triggers automatic emergency braking if the driver does not react. Euro NCAP has tested pedestrian AEB since 2016, and the EU General Safety Regulation is phasing in mandatory emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection for new vehicles. Buses and trucks add side and rear cameras to cover the blind spots around large vehicles, where many urban collisions occur.

Pedestrian detection cannot wait for a network. The cameras connect directly to an edge AI computer on the vehicle, which runs the detection model, judges the risk and drives the warnings or speed control within milliseconds. That computer has to survive vibration, shock, dust, wide temperature swings and the vehicle’s power supply, including voltage dips during engine start.

Our smart factory case study shows rugged fanless Jetson Orin NX computers running pedestrian avoidance on material handling vehicles, and our rugged Jetson computers are built for that environment.

We supply rugged edge AI computers for vehicle safety systems as standard, with camera inputs, CAN or digital I/O, the operating system and AI runtime installed and tested before the system ships.