SaferHands
SaferHands is a vision-based machine safety system from Swedish vendor ManoMotion. A single RGB camera and an NVIDIA Jetson board track operators' hands, predict dangerous movements and trigger a machine stop before contact occurs on saws and presses.
What is SaferHands?
SaferHands is the industrial safety product of ManoMotion AB, a Swedish deep-tech company born out of doctoral research at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. It turns an ordinary camera into a safety sensor for dangerous machinery, and it is sold as a ready-to-run kit rather than as a software subscription.
The principle is a shift from reactive to predictive protection. Light curtains and laser barriers react once something crosses a threshold, and they cannot tell a hand from a workpiece. SaferHands instead reconstructs hand posture in three dimensions and infers what the operator is about to do. A single RGB camera mounted above the machine feeds a model running on an NVIDIA Jetson board; the software continuously maps user-defined Safe, Warning and Danger zones and fires a signal over GPIO to stop the machine or alert the operator before contact.
ManoMotion states more than 99% detection accuracy and end-to-end latency below 10 ms on its current pages; the November 2023 datasheet quotes 99% accuracy, 50+ FPS and a reaction time under 20 ms. Optimal detection range is 50 cm to 100 cm and up to three hands are tracked at once, both figures described as customisable. The shipped kit contains the pre-installed software, an NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX with a 384-core Volta GPU and 8 GB of RAM, a See3CAM_CU30 camera built on an onsemi AR0330 sensor, a camera mount and adjustable holder, green, yellow and red signal lights, a 7-inch display, and five printed QR codes used to calibrate the zones. Linux ships with the board; Jetson Nano and Windows boards are also supported, though not every Windows board carries the digital output the safety signals need.
Target machines are saws, band saws, drills, mills, lathes, presses, roller mills, bending machines and collaborative robots. The company obtained the first AI-based safety certification from IFA and BG in Germany, working with machine builder Altendorf. That certification covers the integration into specific machines: the vendor's own FAQ states that SaferHands is not certified as a standalone solution. A tyre manufacturer ran a pilot on roller mills that ended with zero accidents and an order for twenty more machines.
What it does
- Detects and tracks several hands in real time from a single overhead RGB camera
- Predicts where a hand is heading and fires a safety signal before contact occurs
- Maps user-defined Safe, Warning and Danger zones around the machine
- Stops the machine or alerts the operator through the Jetson board's GPIO output
- Shows status on a 7-inch display and on green, yellow and red signal lights
- Reconstructs hand posture in 3D, including bounding box and basic skeleton per hand
- Recalibrates the safety zones from printed QR codes, with no external software
When to use SaferHands / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if SaferHands is the right fit.
When to use SaferHands
- Machine builders and OEMs looking to differentiate a product line with a certified safety feature, as Altendorf did on its panel saws
- Plant managers operating equipment with a high risk of hand injury: roller mills, saws, presses and bending machines
- EHS and safety engineers whose existing light curtains and laser barriers generate too many false trips to be workable
- Manufacturers preparing their machinery for EU Regulation 2023/1230
- Automation integrators who need to add protection to installed equipment without a full technical overhaul
When not to use SaferHands
- Buyers who need a certified standalone safety device: certification covers integration into specific machines, not SaferHands on its own
- Sites governed by standards that require dual-channel safety, which the standard package does not provide
- Applications needing full-body or whole-operator detection, which is a customisation rather than a standard feature
- Plants standardised on Profisafe, since Jetson boards need a signal converter to talk to it
- Anyone expecting self-service purchase or a published price: every deal goes through a sales cycle
How to use SaferHands
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Contact ManoMotion through the enquiry form or at sales@manomotion.com — there is no self-service purchase
- Book a live demonstration to see the detection running before committing
- Discuss your machine, your environment and your certification target during the exploration phase
- Agree any customisation needed: detection range, number of hands, body detection, dual channel or alternative boards
- Receive the SaferHands package, with the software pre-installed on the Jetson board
- Connect the package to power, attach the display and mount the camera above the machine, pointing downwards
- Calibrate the Warning and Danger zones using the five supplied QR markers
- Wire the GPIO output into the machine's control devices and switches
- Check operation through the on-screen output and the signal lights on the box
- Work with a certification body, with ManoMotion's assistance, to certify the equipped machine
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Tells a human hand from an object, where light curtains and laser beams cause false detections
- Retrofits onto existing equipment without a full technical overhaul
- Runs on commodity hardware, a standard RGB camera and an NVIDIA Jetson board, with no proprietary sensor
- First AI-based machine safety certification obtained in Germany, with IFA and BG
- Processing happens on the machine itself, with no cloud dependency described
- Verifiable industrial references: Altendorf, a tyre manufacturer, and measurement validation by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
- Fully customisable by the vendor for a specific industrial environment
Cons
- No public pricing at all: the Prices anchor on both product pages leads to a section that does not exist
- Not certified as a standalone solution; certification is granted machine by machine, on the integration
- No dual-channel safety in the standard package, which several machine safety standards require
- The standard package detects hands only; full-body detection is a paid customisation
- Not directly compatible with Profisafe, so a signal conversion step is needed
- Privacy policy dated May 2018 and never revised, with no DPA and no stated hosting country
- Published specifications diverge between the 2023 datasheet and the 2026 website
Pricing & Plans
No pricing is published. ManoMotion does not operate a pricing page, and the Prices anchor present on both SaferHands pages points to a section that does not exist. There is no free plan and no free trial: SaferHands is sold as a combined hardware and software kit through a sales conversation, with contact made through the enquiry form or at sales@manomotion.com. Prospective buyers should expect a quotation rather than a list price. The only monetary figure the vendor publishes is contextual: the datasheet places the average cost of a workplace hand injury between USD 600 and USD 26,000.
- SaferHands Package — SaferHands software pre-installed
- NVIDIA Jetson board
- I/O signal light
- camera and holder
- display
- and setup QR codes
- price on request
- Customisations quoted separately — body detection
- dual-channel operation
- predictive signals such as hand speed and acceleration
- alternative cameras and boards
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how SaferHands handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR compliance is claimed explicitly: the policy states it is fully compliant with the GDPR and the DPA, and names a Data Protection Officer, Manu Martin, reachable at manu@manomotion.com. Rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability are listed, with consent as the stated legal basis and withdrawal available at any time. Two reservations deserve attention. The document is dated 25 May 2018, the day the GDPR took effect, and its own changelog records no revision since. It also directs complaints to the United Kingdom's Information Commissioner's Office, although the vendor is established in Sweden, where the competent authority is the IMY. No Data Processing Agreement is published or offered, and no Article 27 representative is designated, which is consistent with an EU-established company.
Who owns the data?
ManoMotion AB is the data controller, under a single privacy policy covering its SDKs, APIs, documentation and services. It separates two populations: developer and corporate customers, whose name, company, e-mail, country, phone, IP address, licences and payments are stored; and end users of applications built on the technology, from whom IP address, device model, connection timestamp and images are collected. The company states it keeps no further identifying detail about image owners, and runs algorithms that strip faces and identifying features. Users hold the full GDPR set of rights — access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability — and may withdraw their consent at any time.
Reuse rights
The privacy policy sets out four purposes: customer identification and business relationship, licence authentication and management, technology performance measurement, and improvement of ManoMotion's services and products. IP address and device ID are stated to serve licence validation and management only. Separately, the company reserves the right to collect random, unlabelled, anonymised images from end-user applications and to use them to improve the data-driven technology behind its products; no opt-out mechanism is documented anywhere on the site. Five named third parties may process the data: SerialKeyManager/Cryptolens AB, Stockholm Sweden AB, Slack, Google Services for e-mail and forms, and Teamtailor for recruitment. Note that this policy is written around the ManoMotion SDK rather than the SaferHands industrial kit, and no product-specific terms are published.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
No hosting jurisdiction is disclosed. Neither the privacy policy nor any other page names a country or region where data is stored, and no data residency option is described. Two distinctions matter. SaferHands itself processes video on the NVIDIA Jetson board installed at the machine, so hand tracking runs on site, with no cloud dependency described anywhere in the documentation. Account, licence and support data are a separate matter and pass through five named third parties: Cryptolens AB, which is Swedish, Stockholm Sweden AB, Slack, Google Services and Teamtailor. Their own locations are not stated. For completeness, the manomotion.com web server resolves to an IP address geolocated in Stockholm on Amazon infrastructure, but that concerns the marketing site rather than the product. Buyers with data residency obligations will need to obtain this in writing, since nothing published on the site answers it.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting SaferHands.
- The claimed certification applies to the integration into specific machines, never to SaferHands alone — confirm the exact scope for your own equipment before relying on it
- Treating a predictive system as a substitute for guarding, training and procedure is the classic way a safety investment ends up making a workplace less safe
- The standard package offers no dual-channel redundancy, so a single point of failure is not covered; verify this against your certifying body's requirements
- The privacy policy allows random collection of images from end-user applications to improve the technology, with no documented opt-out
- That policy dates from May 2018, has never been revised, and refers complainants to the UK Information Commissioner's Office although the vendor is Swedish
- Cameras pointed at workstations raise employee monitoring questions that a safety framing does not answer on its own; settle them with staff representatives early
- The site's footer publishes sales@manomotions.com, a misspelt domain; the working address is sales@manomotion.com
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Moderate, and physical rather than software work. The kit arrives with the software pre-installed, so there is no build step, but someone must mount the camera above the machine, connect power and display, calibrate the Safe, Warning and Danger zones with the five supplied QR markers, and wire the GPIO output into the machine's control circuit. That last step needs automation and electrical competence. Tutorials and documentation are provided. Two things extend the effort: a Profisafe environment requires a signal converter, and certifying the equipped machine is a separate project run with a certification body.
Integrations
Behind SaferHands
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What hardware and operating system does SaferHands run on?
How does SaferHands connect to an industrial machine?
Is SaferHands safety-certified on its own?
Does it support dual-channel safety requirements?
How many hands can it detect, and at what distance?
Does it detect the operator's whole body?
Is it compatible with Profisafe?
How much does SaferHands cost?
Is installation support provided?
Who is behind SaferHands?
Should you pick SaferHands?
SaferHands occupies unusual ground. Vision-based machine safety is a thin field, and ManoMotion is one of very few vendors that can point to a certification rather than a demonstration: the IFA and BG approval obtained in Germany through the Altendorf integration is the strongest thing on the page, and the tyre-manufacturing pilot that ended in an order for twenty more machines suggests the product survives contact with a real plant.
The reservation sits in the same sentence. That certification covers the integration into a named machine, not SaferHands in isolation. The vendor's own FAQ says so plainly, which is to its credit, but it means every new deployment reopens the question with a certification body. The absence of dual-channel support in the standard package will disqualify the product outright in some regulatory contexts, and the Profisafe gap adds an integration step. Buyers should also note that the performance figures moved between the 2023 datasheet and the current site, so contractual specifications matter more here than published numbers.
Commercially, the product is opaque. There is no price, no trial and no self-service path, and an anchor labelled Prices that leads nowhere. That is ordinary for industrial capital equipment, but it does mean evaluation cannot begin without a sales conversation. The legal documentation is thin for a company selling into regulated environments: a privacy policy dated May 2018, never revised, pointing complainants at a British authority while the company is Swedish, with no DPA on offer.
For a machine builder wanting a differentiating safety feature, or a plant fighting hand injuries that light curtains cannot prevent, SaferHands is worth the call. For anyone needing certified, self-contained, dual-channel protection off the shelf, it is not there yet.
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