Otis Elevator Company

Johanna Whitwell

Randy Roberts

Craig Drew Bogli

Kyler Vensel

Kathleen Nicole Moore

James Tilsley Auxier

An elevator system includes a hoistway; an elevator car configured to travel in the hoistway; a pit located at a bottom of the hoistway; a safety chain configured to enable or disable motion of the elevator car; and a sensor assembly configured to initiate opening the safety chain to disable motion of the elevator car upon detection of a person in the pit.

Elevator system including sensor assembly for person detection

An elevator system includes a hoistway, an elevator car configured to travel in the hoistway, and a pit located at a bottom of the hoistway. A safety chain is configured to enable or disable motion of the elevator car, and a sensor assembly is configured to initiate opening the safety chain to disable motion of the elevator car upon detection of a person in a detection region of the sensor assembly in the hoistway. A test device is configured to test operation of the sensor assembly to detect malfunctioning and/or tampering of operation of the sensor assembly.

Elevator pit monitoring and integrity check of monitoring system

A safety net system is provided for an elevator system that includes an elevator pit. The safety net system includes a sensor and a processor. The sensor is arranged in a plane along a bottom of the elevator pit and is configured to perform sensing to sense an object disposed along the plane and to generate data corresponding to results of the sensing. The processor is operably coupled to the sensor and is configured to analyze the data and to determine whether the data is indicative of a person in the elevator pit based on analysis results.

Elevator pit safety net system

A method of operating a safety net system of an elevator system is provided. The method includes installing a sensor in an elevator pit of the elevator system and executing a learning phase of the sensor to verify successful installation of the sensor. The executing of the learning phase includes causing the sensor to sense physical characteristics of a portion of the elevator pit when the elevator pit is known to have certain physical characteristics to generate a background reading, comparing the background reading against a reading associated with known physical characteristics of the portion of the elevator pit and verifying the successful installation of the sensor based on results of the comparing.

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Hartford, CT, United States of America

Johanna Whitwell