Will Smart Elevator Technology Enter a New Phase of Growth?

Smart Elevators were originally designed to reduce the time cost of waiting for elevators in skyscraper buildings at busy hours. They make fewer stops by clustering passengers into specific cars based on their destination floors. If you’ve never seen a smart elevator, it’s a different experience. Instead of pushing an “up” or “down” button as you would with a traditional elevator, you find a single control panel in the middle of the lobby. The panel has buttons allowing you to select a floor in advance, after which you are directed to a specific elevator car.

Customers have been slow to adopt smart elevator technology because it is cost prohibitive to install in smaller buildings. The technology is only feasible in buildings with chronic overcrowding problems in elevators and lobbies. However, skyscraper sizes could double in the near future with the emergence of new carbon-fiber elevator cables. With any size increase this sharp, any system is bound to come up against scalability and performance barriers. Doubling the height of an elevator doubles the amount of time needed to make a round trip to the top floor, and it also doubles the potential number of stops in between. For the next generation of buildings, smart elevator controls are likely to become a necessity.

Since elevator passengers have been long accustomed to pressing an up or down button, then entering the first set of doors to open, a behavior change is required for any intelligent control system to operate. Depending on demand and traffic patterns, additional measures may be needed to mitigate congestion. For example, banks of elevators might be marked as “express” elevators, limited to stopping at certain floors only during high-traffic periods. Or, passengers may need to reserve a spot on an elevator in advance. With a sufficiently sophisticated monitoring system in place, smart elevator control systems will be able to monitor demand in real-time and adjust availability of elevator cars as needed.

Cloud-Enabled Elevators

This is just another application for the “internet of things.” As devices become more intelligent and more interconnected, they will become able to perform at their core functions more effectively and seamlessly. For example, an employee who works in a large building might be able to drive to work in a cloud-enabled car and guided right to an available parking space based on his or her work location. The car might also be able to communicate live with the building’s parking deck and elevator control system to let the elevator know approximately when the employee will need to travel to the 40^th floor. Aggregating and compiling this kind of data could allow systems to increase their capacity significantly without the need for any more physical hardware.

Data Sharing

As multiple elevators are installed in different cities and countries, real-time elevator traffic data could be shared between different buildings for the purpose of identifying patterns in traffic and finding new ways to reduce demand at critical time periods. For example, businesses could adjust meeting times or employee start and end times. Commercial landlords might begin to charge fees for use of the elevators. Elevator traffic data and behavior patterns could be analyzed to determine best practices.

Smart elevators may experience a resurgence if and when kilometer-high buildings begin popping up. In any event, it’s a near certainty that this type of cloud-based traffic control technology will be employed in city planning systems.

This entry was posted on September 25th, 2013 and is filed under General, Technology. Both comments and pings are currently closed.