Answering Questions I've Always Had About Elevators


Here is a typical problem: A passenger on the sixth floor wants to descend. The closest car is on the seventh floor, but it already has three riders and has made two stops. Is it the right choice to make that car stop again? That would be the best result for the sixth-floor passenger, but it would make the other people's rides longer.

For Ms. Christy, these are mathematical problems with no one optimum solution. In the real world, there are so many parameters and combinations that everything changes as soon as the next rider presses a button. In a building with six elevators and 10 people trying to move between floors, there are over 60 million possible combinations—too many, she says, for the elevator's computer to process in split seconds.
Fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal

Comments

  1. The Marriott Marquis in NYC has the system referred to in the sidebar of the article. You enter the floor you want to go to from the lobby, and it tells you the elevator to take.

    Great points in the article about wait time and # of stops during a elevator descent.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So does the Hyatt Regency New Orleans. I had a lot of trouble getting used to it but I may be old-fashioned.

    ReplyDelete

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