Introducing the Sling Safety Add-on
The Next Generation of Rigging Safety
In our comprehensive guide to crane safety, so far we explored the significant risks that can impact manufacturing environments. Crane operations save time and move industry forward, but every year rigging mistakes cause costly downtime and serious injuries. While traditional safety measures are essential, we know the real challenge lies in human error and the moments that are hardest to monitor.
That’s why we heard your concerns, and in response to strong customer demand, we are excited to release our new Sling Safety Add-on, a groundbreaking, patent-pending feature designed to eliminate these risks.
The Sling Safety Add-on is a powerful new layer of protection against the most common and dangerous rigging errors. The primary risk of improper sling positioning is the load falling or flipping. This can have severe consequences and often arises under two specific conditions:
- The operator may forget to attach or detach a sling, resulting in an unbalanced load during lifting.
- All slings are properly detached, but one or more become stuck to the load, creating a hazard during an empty lift.
Now, with those risks in mind, we can look at the solution.
How It Works: A Smarter Approach to Sling Detection
Instead of leaving sling checks to human eyes alone, the Sling Safety Add-on uses two additional cameras—complementing the Operator Safety system—to detect slings, assess their positions, and determine the overall safety status. It enhances safety by preventing the crane from lifting when slings are incorrectly positioned. To detect and prevent stuck sling incidents, it also uses a load cell to monitor empty lifts—alerting the crane automation if the measured load unexpectedly increases.
Supported Sling Types
There are several types of slings used in industrial lifting. The Sling Safety Add-on is a versatile tool that can be used with a variety of them:
- Chain Rope and Fiber Slings: The system supports segmentation mode for chain rope and fiber slings, allowing them to be utilized without buoys, markers, or indicators.
- Wire Rope Slings: These slings work in classification (object detection) mode and require buoys.
Operation Modes
The system operates in two distinct modes to ensure maximum flexibility and safety:
- Segmentation Mode: This mode detects the whole sling, end to end, with multiple joints including their exact position on the image. A second algorithm calculates the path the joints create and evaluates the straightness of the detected sling. In a heavy lifting operation with four slings, each side is expected to have a sling attached to each corner, and if properly attached to the load, it is expected to draw an almost straight line. For an empty lift, no slings should be in the corner zones; all must be taken to the center.
- Classification Mode: This mode, also known as object detection, uses an algorithm that identifies specific objects in an image using a deep learning model and provides their locations. This mode requires buoys to be attached to the sling. The system detects the buoys and, based on their positions, determines whether it is safe to lift—whether empty or loaded. This mode is especially useful when no segmentation model exists for a specific sling type, as it can be used with any sling by detecting only the buoys.
Provisions for Safe Lifting
The system signals the crane as safe for lifting when specific conditions are met.
For heavy lifting, the following conditions must be met:
- Both slings are required to be placed towards opposite corners of the image.
- Slings must stretch proportionally; if the straightness value of one of the slings increases while others remain low, it may be a misplacement, and lifting must be stopped.
- If the load cell detects a load while at least one of the slings has not reached the minimum straightness level, lifting must be prevented.
For empty lifting, the system signals the crane as safe when the following conditions are met:
- No slings in corner zones; all must be taken to the center.
- Crane automation must cross-check with a load cell to ensure it does not show any load, as an increase in weight hints at a stuck sling.
This intelligent add-on provides an essential layer of safety, giving your operators the confidence to manage every lift with greater security and efficiency.
Conclusion
This post on the Sling Safety Add-on marks the final piece in our comprehensive five-part series on crane safety. Over the course of these posts, we’ve guided you from the fundamentals of crane types to the specific, cutting-edge solutions that are revolutionizing safety in manufacturing. We hope this series has demonstrated our commitment to providing innovative, customer-driven solutions that protect your people and your assets.
The Crane Safety AI platform, with its operator and sling safety features, represents a complete, proactive approach to industrial safety that moves beyond traditional reactive measures. Our commitment to continuous innovation ensures that our technology will continue to evolve, addressing other unsolved safety challenges and setting new standards for the industry.