Join us at BREAKBULK AMERICAS SEPT 22–23, 2026 Houston, TX BOOTH M01
// Method 02

Smart impact pole with 360° beacon and mesh alert.

The Smart Impact Pole is Convoy Guardian's contact detection method. It is a high-precision electronic pole mounted on top of the load, with multi-axis accelerometers embedded along its shaft. The instant it touches a structure, a 360° red beacon strobes at the pole tip and every Convoy Guardian device in the mesh receives the strike alert — in under 100 milliseconds, with no cell connection involved. It is part of Convoy Guardian, made by SolTec Innovation.

Compare with Method 01
Convoy Guardian Smart Pole Unveiling at Breakbulk Americas Booth M01 · Sept 22–23, 2026

Why detect the touch, not the crash

A multi-axis accelerometer array along the shaft is sensitive enough to register contact long before anything is bent. That distinction is the whole design: the pole is meant to be the thing that touches the bridge, so the load never does. A brush against a beam is a signal, not an incident — and it is one you want the whole convoy to hear immediately.

Two alerts at once

  • A 360° red strobe at the pole tip — visible from any angle, to anyone watching the load, including people who are not carrying a device
  • A mesh alert to every Convoy Guardian device in the convoy in under 100 ms — the driver, the escort ahead, the escort behind, all at once

When the Smart Impact Pole is the right method

  • Unpermitted or unsurveyed corridors where no clearance data exists
  • Dense urban routes with sign gantries, utility lines, and awkward overpass geometry
  • Private industrial sites that were never mapped and have no cell coverage
  • As a backup layer behind LiDAR, catching what a forward-looking sensor cannot see

What it does not do

It does not predict. The pole cannot buy you stopping distance the way LiDAR lead-vehicle sensing can, because it only knows something when contact occurs. What it guarantees is that contact is never silent, never delayed by a radio call, and never missing from the record. For the strongest configuration, run both methods in parallel.

Mounting and logging

The pole mounts load-topside and is fitted during installation as part of the complete field kit. Every strike event it registers goes into the same audit-grade blackbox as the LiDAR readings, so an incident review reads one timeline regardless of which method fired.

Tap the pole yourself.

At a live demo — or at Booth M01 at Breakbulk Americas 2026 — you hit the pole with your hand and hear every device on the table alert.