Abstract: Systems, methods, and media for safety reinforcement for a personal protective equipment (PPE) device for a material handling vehicle are provided. The safety reinforcement system can include a control unit co-located with the material handling vehicle and configured to receive an identification from the PPE device, communicate the identification to a server, receive an operating routine for the identified PPE device from the server in response to the identification, receive a first operational data from the PPE device, and transmit a limiting instruction to a subsystem of the material handling vehicle according to the operating routine. The operating routine may comprise at least one of a translation routine and a governing rule. The limiting instruction may limit a function of the material handling vehicle.

Abstract: The present invention features a method and an apparatus for sensing the speed and the direction of rotation of a motor. The apparatus of the invention has a timing wheel disk that is attached to the rotational shaft of a motor and has a number of slots. Opposite the timing wheel are mounted two spaced-together proximity sensors that are a given or a fixed distance apart. The sensors are spaced to read within each slot of the disk at any given point during in the rotation of the timing wheel. When the sensors detect the edges of each slot of the rotating wheel, signals are generated. The sensors respectively define sensing channels A and B. A microcontroller contains a logic program that calculates the motor's speed and direction. Speed is determined by measuring the time that it takes for a point (the edge of a rotating disk's slot) to travel across both sensors.