Samsara Inc. has added a 360-degree AI camera for equipment working in construction sites, warehouses, mines and airports, extending the safety and operational visibility the company already provides for road fleets to machines with open cabs.
The Samsara 360 Camera combines a dual-fisheye lens with Samsara's AI to capture a full view around the operator from a single mounting point. It is aimed at excavators, forklifts and similar open-cab machines that often work within feet of coworkers and other equipment but have had no camera system built for their conditions.
Built for work without a windshield
According to Samsara, equipment used in physical operations typically has an open cab, no windshield and no roof, with hazards on every side. Without footage from the ground, the company says, incident investigations stall, liability is disputed and the same unsafe behaviours can be repeated.
"The frontline workers operating forklifts, excavators, and ground equipment do some of the riskiest work in physical operations," said David Gal, vice president of product and engineering at Samsara. He said the camera was built to withstand those conditions and to see all the way around the operator, so customers can protect frontline workers on the warehouse floor, the job site and the ramp the same way they do on the road.
One mount instead of four
Conventional 360-degree systems for equipment require four cameras, four mounts and a separate recorder, according to the company. The 360 Camera captures its full view from a single point, installs in the manner of a Samsara dash cam, and is built to withstand harsh weather and rough operating conditions. Managers can pan and zoom through any recorded event to review it from every angle.
Turning footage into a safety program
Samsara AI, which the company says is built on nearly a decade of its AI dash cam work, turns that footage into detections trained on how equipment is actually operated. The system flags:
- mobile phone use;
- camera obstruction;
- seat and lap belt use;
- harsh impacts.
Managers can see which operators, sites and equipment types show repeat risky behaviour. When an impact occurs, video is automatically pulled into the Samsara Safety Inbox, which the company says allows investigations to close on evidence rather than on competing accounts. The same footage is intended to support coaching on an operator's own recordings, enforcement of zero-tolerance mobile phone policies and faster OSHA investigations, while timestamped video can back insurance claims and help establish or clear liability.
Equipment monitoring on the same platform
Samsara for Equipment runs alongside the 360 Camera on the platform customers already use for their road fleets. Teams can see how long a forklift or excavator sits idling, schedule preventive maintenance by engine hours rather than by the calendar, and check how many forklifts actually run at peak before buying more. Samsara agents work with this equipment out of the box, so a fault code can open a work order automatically, and vehicles, equipment and operators are managed on one platform instead of a separate OEM portal for each brand.