The Sky-Box provides power to a forklift's aftermarket additions.

Sky-Trax Inc has introduced Sky-Box, an on-board mobile network for forklifts, automated guided vehicles and other industrial vehicles.

Designed as a computing and connectivity module, the Sky-Box provides power to all aftermarket additions to industrial vehicles. It can also receive transactional and/or location data from on-board sensors or transaction tools.

The device improves a forklift operator's performance by "allowing all sensors and aftermarket additions to plug and play together", says marketing manager Sarah Sagin.

"It increases the ability to integrate, interchange or quickly replace a sensor on a forklift with great ease," she says, adding that the tool is an alternative to vehicle-mounted computers.

"Many times these monitors obstruct the field of view of the driver, creating blind spots and increasing the danger of already prominent safety hazards.

"Sky-Trax has separated the monitor and the computer allowing drivers to use smaller touch screens that are positioned safely in a convenient location to not obstruct the driver's field of view."

Sagin explains that Sky-Box is a component of the Total-Trax System, an automatic vehicle location and data collection system manufactured by the company. The market for Sky-Box as an individual product is anticipated to be in the "tens of thousands considering over 200,000 new forklifts are sold in the US annually".

"A large percentage of newly-purchased forklifts will have additional after market sensors or systems added to them prior to or after purchasing," Sagin says.

Sky-Trax aims to produce about 1,000 Sky-Boxes for individual sale in its first year of production. Manufactured in the US, the product is available globally.