Samsara Inc. has introduced Samsara Equipment and the Samsara 360 Camera, a dual-fisheye-lens, 360-degree AI camera that the company says carries the safety and operational visibility it already supplies to road fleets into equipment working in demanding environments.
The product is aimed at machines with open cabs — excavators, forklifts and airport pushback vehicles operating on construction sites, in warehouses, mines and at airports — which typically work within feet of coworkers and other equipment. Samsara states that none of that equipment previously had a camera system built for the job, and that the absence of ground-level footage left incident investigations stalled, liability disputed and the same unsafe behaviors repeated.
One mount instead of four cameras
According to Samsara, conventional 360-degree systems for equipment need four cameras, four mounts and a separate recorder. The 360 Camera instead captures a full 360-degree view from a single mounting 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.
David Gal, vice president of product and engineering at Samsara, said frontline workers operating forklifts, excavators and ground equipment do some of the riskiest work in physical operations, describing those machines as having open cabs with no windshield and no roof and hazards on every side. He said the camera was built to be tough enough for 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 airport ramp as they do on the road.
What the AI is trained to flag
The camera runs on Samsara AI, which the company says builds on nearly a decade of development of its AI dash cams. With the 360 Camera, teams can:
- Detect risk from every direction: AI detections flag mobile phone use, obstruction of the camera, seat and lap belt use and harsh impacts, with models trained on how equipment is actually operated.
- Locate recurring risk: managers can see which operators, sites and equipment types show repeated risky behavior, and each impact automatically routes video into the Samsara Safety Inbox so investigations rest on recorded evidence rather than conflicting accounts.
- Intervene earlier: managers can coach operators using their own footage, enforce zero-tolerance mobile phone policies and speed up OSHA investigations without adding headcount; timestamped video also supports insurance claims and helps establish or clear liability quickly.
Shared platform with fleet operations
Samsara for Equipment combines with the 360 Camera, equipment monitoring and Samsara agents on the same platform organizations use for their road fleets. Teams can see how long each forklift or excavator sits idling, schedule preventive maintenance by actual engine hours instead of by the calendar, and check how many forklifts genuinely run at peak before buying more. Samsara says its agents work with this equipment out of the box, so a fault code can open a work order automatically, and that every vehicle, piece of equipment and operator sits on one platform rather than a separate OEM portal for each brand.