Oswaldo Martin, Matthew Ard, Joseph Diaz, and Joseph Cruz are all mechanical and civil engineering undergrads at San Jose State University that make up the team behind this project. Together each member brings their skills as novices and experienced CAD designers to tackle the human interface challenge behind the wheel of the typical forklift.

Step 1: Safety and the Human Interface

In tackling the design challenge of improving human interface, the main concern in our design was safety. We found that almost always the main culprit of hazards with the forklift begins with the user and their operation of these vehicles which poses a risk not just to themselves but others on the work floor. Our design attempts to tackle this issue by rethinking the way forklifts ought to be controlled with an attention to new mechanics of its operation.

Step 2: Decision Matrix

In coming up with a design for this project our group brainstormed many ideas until we landed on one through the process of setting up a design matrix. We chose to do a rotatable chair design with integrated controls and then designated which components to construct.

Step 3: Design Sketches

Our design sketches showcase some of our finalized ideas for this project and provides a detailed description of each piece that we constructed in our final design.

Step 4: Rotating Chair and Body

To implement our design under time constraints we opted to use publicly available GrabCAD assets to help us realize our design. We focused on creating a rotatable chair with a rotunda driving the mechanism to allow drivers to open up their line of sight when operating the forklift by being able to sit in any 360 degree configuration.

Step 5: Integrated Controls

The challenge posed by a rotatable seat centered on the controls being integrated into the chair as this freed an operators hands from using a wheel and allows them to have all necessary controls in hand or under their feet such as driving and lift operations.

Step 6: Rotating Chair Demonstration

With all the crucial console operations located into the chair itself, a user can configure their seat orientation to accommodate otherwise uncomfortable maneuvers when driving the forklift. This also puts these controls readily in the operators reach allowing for user intervention in hazardous situations where seconds may count.

Step 7: Final Design

In our final design we do not stray too drastically from the typical forklift body, but we did have to expand some parameters like the floor of the machine to accommodate our rotating seat and its driving mechanisms. Overall, the design decisions our group made came from our experience with intuitive controls such as the joycon, mouse, keyboard, and videogames that many future operators might opt to use due to familiarity. One other design consideration we had was to implement a screen console with extended sightlines aided by cameras on the forklift rig.