Tuesday, January 17, 2006

According to this Cincinnati Enquirer article, the new elevator system in the Metropolitan Park West Tower in downtown Seattle "alleviates passenger bottlenecks" and "minimizes stops by grouping together passengers with common destinations."

"Here's how it works:

Self-standing and wall-mounted kiosks with touch screens are installed in common areas where elevator passengers wait. Passengers enter their destination floor on the touch screen.

The requests are processed, and a message is displayed informing users to ride a specific car.

"In a conventional system, waiting passengers crowd into the first available elevator, which often results in the car stopping at numerous floors, increasing travel time," said Joe Rennekamp, vice president of engineering at Fujitec's corporate offices in Lebanon.

In time, the new Fujitec system becomes even more efficient at grouping passengers by learning elevator-use patterns, said Rennekamp, whose team of engineers pioneered the software for the system. It does this by considering historical information to learn traffic variances in the building."