LocaXion
Field Guide Volume I, No. 001 2026
RTLS Field Guide  ·  Issue 001  ·  Spring 2026
A Comparative Study of Four Indoor-Location Systems

Forklift
Tracking.

How it actually works — and what it really costs, once the pilot is over and the invoice clears.

Subject
Indoor RTLS.
Technologies
Four.
Pages
01 – 04.
Editor
LocaXion
01
Chapter One · The Baseline

Basic Telematics & GPS.

A small box on the forklift, a cellular signal out, and an engine-hour counter. Cheap. Blind indoors.

§ 1.1  /  How It Works

A small box mounts on the forklift. Outside, GPS tracks it like your phone. Inside the building, GPS drops out.1 It still captures engine hours, impacts, and battery data over cellular or Wi-Fi.

There is no indoor map. You know the truck ran for six hours. You do not know where it went, what aisle it sat idle in, or whether the operator took a ninety-minute break in the back corner. The device does not care.

§ 1.2  /  Cost Breakdown
Line itemUnitFigure
Forklift hardwareper truck$200 – $800
Facility infrastructure—$0
Installationper truck$150 – $300
Softwareper truck / month$30 – $105
Year 1 total
10 trucks, 100k sq ft baseline
 $7,000 – $24,000
Figure 1.1
GPS signal loss at the dock door.
Outside the envelope, position fix is continuous. Once the mast breaks the threshold, satellite geometry collapses and the telematics unit falls back to engine-hours only.
GPS OUTSIDE position: fixed INSIDE position: unknown SIGNAL LOSS 100,000 SQ FT · BASELINE
02
Chapter Two · The Bubble

UWB Ranging.

A safety bubble that pings between tags. It does not know where anyone is, only how far apart they are.

§ 2.1  /  How It Works

This system does not track location. It measures distance. A UWB tag on the forklift and a tag on each worker constantly ping each other.2

If a worker steps inside the safety bubble, the forklift beeps, flashes lights, or slows down automatically. That is the complete scope of what it does. There is no map, no coordinate system, no history of where anyone has been — just a pairwise distance measurement between two radios, updated many times per second.

§ 2.2  /  Cost Breakdown
Line itemUnitFigure
Forklift hardwareper truck$1,000 – $2,500
Pedestrian tagsper person$50 – $150
Facility infrastructure—$0
Softwareper truck / month$20 – $150
Year 1 total
10 trucks, 30 workers, 100k sq ft
 $16,000 – $53,000
Figure 2.1
Peer-to-peer ranging, no coordinates.
Each tag measures distance to every other tag in view. The bubble shown is a threshold, not a location. When d < r the system fires an alert.
FORKLIFT r = safety bubble WORKER · ALERT d < r WORKER · OK d > r RACKING = FALSE ALARMS TAG INSIDE BUBBLE
03
Chapter Three · The Grid

UWB + BLE Full XYZ Tracking.

A triangulated ceiling grid. Centimeters of accuracy, and a six-figure cabling project hiding inside the proposal.

§ 3.1  /  How It Works

Fixed anchors mount in the ceiling every 40 to 60 feet. A small tag on the forklift lets those anchors triangulate its exact X, Y, and Z position.3

UWB gets you down to the centimeter. BLE gets you within a meter. The data is detailed and reliable. The installation is where costs pile up fast — running PoE cables to fifty or more anchors across an active facility means electricians, scissor lifts, and weekend shutdowns. Budgets that looked tidy on the slide grow teeth in the field.

§ 3.2  /  Cost Breakdown
Line itemUnitFigure
Forklift tagper truck$100 – $300
Anchor hardware40 – 80 units$6,000 – $40,000
Installation laborone-time$8,000 – $32,000
Softwareper year$10,000 – $30,000
Year 1 total
10 trucks, 100k sq ft baseline
 $40,000 – $100,000+
Figure 3.1
Ceiling anchor grid, 40 – 60 ft spacing.
A 100,000 sq ft facility typically requires 40 – 80 anchors. Each anchor is a PoE drop: a cable run, a drilled penetration, and a commissioned terminal.
PoE RUN forklift tag XYZ · < 1 cm 40 – 60 FT 100,000 SQ FT · 40 – 80 ANCHORS
04
Chapter Four · The Onboard

SLAM-Based RTLS.

No ceiling grid. The truck reads the world, solves its own position, and watches for pedestrians in the same pass.

§ 4.1  /  How It Works

SLAM mounts AI cameras or LiDAR directly onto the forklift. The system reads the floor, surrounding structures, and occasional ceiling references to calculate its own position.4

No wired ceiling grid required. The onboard GPU processes everything in real time, delivering precise X, Y, Z tracking and simultaneous detection of pedestrians and other vehicles. One unit handles both jobs — the positioning radio and the safety camera are no longer two separate line items on two different invoices.

§ 4.2  /  Cost Breakdown
Line itemUnitFigure
Forklift hardware (AI / GPU)per truck$2,000 – $5,000
Facility infrastructure—$0 – minimal
Installationper truck$200 – $400
Softwareper truck / month$40 – $100
Year 1 total
10 trucks, any size facility
 $25,000 – $60,000
Figure 4.1
Onboard SLAM: the truck solves for itself.
Camera and LiDAR observe the scene; the GPU fuses features into a live map and a position estimate. The same perception pass feeds pedestrian detection — one device, two deliverables.
SLAM UNIT perception CAMERA + LiDAR PEDESTRIAN · DETECTED FEATURES trajectory ACCURACY 3 cm
Chapter Five · § 5 · Synthesis

Which technology is right for you?

Every facility is different. Use this as a starting point, not a final answer.

Technology Best use case Infrastructure Year 1 cost (10 trucks)
Basic Telematics OSHA checklists, vehicle health None (cellular) $7k – $24k
UWB Ranging Proximity alerts, open areas None (peer-to-peer) $16k – $53k
UWB / BLE XYZ Exact indoor map and tracking Extensive (wired ceiling) $40k – $100k+
SLAM RTLS Precision tracking + AI safety Minimal (visual telemetry) $25k – $60k

★   SLAM highlighted for strongest return when precision tracking and pedestrian safety are both required.

Colophon · Next Steps

Not sure where to start?

LocaXion guides RTLS projects from first assessment through full deployment — without locking you into a single vendor or technology. Every recommendation is based on your facility, your workflows, and your actual ROI targets.

Book an assessment → Visit locaxion.com
Footnotes
  1. GPS position fix requires line-of-sight to at least four satellites. Inside a steel-framed distribution center, fix reliability degrades to single-digit percent.
  2. Ultra-wideband ranging uses time-of-flight across a very short pulse; typical update rate is 10 – 100 Hz between paired tags.
  3. Installation figures assume union electrician rates in a major US metro; non-union or off-hours rates vary. Software prices are list, not negotiated.
  4. “SLAM” — Simultaneous Localization and Mapping — is a family of algorithms that estimate pose and build a map from the same stream of sensor observations.
LocaXion  Field Guide Vol. I · No. 001 · Forklift Tracking © 2026  /  set in Fraunces & Source Serif 4
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