AI-based worker safety specialist Everguard.ai has developed a platform that combines sensor fusion and AI to improve worker safety in industrial and manufacturing environments. Sentri360 is able to sense distress and danger before a human, ensuring greater worker safety and comfort.

Everguard.ai see their platform as support for manufacturers in creating safer and healthier workplaces, and improving efforts to attract and retain workers. They see a renewed emphasis on worker health and safety arising from the challenge of filling skilled manufacturing jobs in developed economies, and consequently rising interest from manufacturers in safety platforms such as their Sentri360.

Deloitte’s 2022 Manufacturing Industry Outlook reported that 38 percent of manufacturing executives see attracting workers as their top priority for 2022. The US Chamber of Commerce reports there are currently only 66 workers for every 100 open jobs in the United States.

Everguard.ai argues its platform can help address this difficulty in attracting and retaining skilled staff. Combining computer vision (CV), sensor fusion, edge computing, and wearables, Everguard’s Sentri360 is designed to create a safety culture and environment where workers can feel looked after and empowered. Whereas in the past safety teams were limited to looking at lagging indicators only after an incident occurred to try and prevent the next one, solutions such as Everguard’s are – for the first time – allowing manufacturers to create a proactive approach to worker health and safety. 

“Manufacturers need to attract team members and fill the openings that are limiting them from meeting demand,” said Sandeep Pandya, Chief Executive Officer of Everguard.ai. “That takes a whole host of initiatives but one of the most fundamental is demonstrating a culture that is committed to health and safety. So, whenever I am involved in a conversation about how manufacturers can attract and retain workers, my input is to start by creating a healthy and safe environment where workers know they can be successful.”

Everguard’s platform creates Sentri Zones with workers at the centre, protecting them in some of the most complex industrial environments like steelmaking and forging. A combination of computer vision (CV), sensor fusion, edge computing, and wearables allows the platform to recognise when a worker is moments away from walking into the path of an overhead crane- and alert him or her to avoid a possible incident. Working with wearables, it can sense when a worker is dehydrated before he or she feels the first symptom – and send an alert to take a break and hydrate. By continuously scanning the air a worker is breathing, Sentri360 can notify him or her when pollutant levels reach dangerous levels. In these and other use cases, the system not only alerts but saves lives by developing an environment for industrial sustainability that finally puts workers at the centre.

“The manufacturing sector is critical to our nation’s economy but it can’t survive – and certainly can’t thrive – without the men and women who keep our mills and factories running every single day,” said Pandya. “Technologies like Worker-Centric AI are one part of the solution to attracting and retaining more talented individuals back to manufacturing.”