Kone Corporation

Kone Elevator Gmbh

Other

Kone Oy

Marja-Liisa Siikonen

Janne Sorsa

Juha-Matti Kuusinen

Mirko Ruokokoski

Henri Hakonen

Kari Suihkonen

Esko Aulanko

Harri Hakala

Johannes De Jong

Pentti Alasentie

Juho Kokkala

Kim Bärlund

Raimo K Pelto-Huikko

Petteri Valjus

Antti Kallioniemi

Jukka Salmikuukka

Petri Kere

Jari Ylinen

Ari Hänninen

Jukka-Pekka Sarjanen

Pekka Korhonen

Nils-Robert Roschier

Ilpo Haipus

Pentti Laihanen

Hannu Kuoppala

Veikko Mattsson

Johan Backlund

Sergey Kitov

Reetta Ranne

Maarten Van Dijk

Kimmo Selin

Jari Karhu

Markus Hautakorpi

Timo Korhonen

Risto Kontturi

Raimo Pelto-huikko

According to an aspect, there is provided a control device. The control device is configured to receive data from a passenger traffic system configured in a building, the data comprising information associated with operations for transferring passengers of the passenger traffic system; based on the received data, monitor a change in a quality of service level of the passenger traffic system in transferring the passengers and a change in a passenger traffic pattern in transferring the passengers in the passenger traffic system; and in response to detecting the change in the service level or in the passenger traffic pattern, run one or more simulations of the passenger traffic in the passenger traffic system in the at least one building using the received data in order to trigger at least one operation to change a configuration of the passenger traffic system.

Control device for passenger traffic system

The invention relates to a method for allocating elevator calls in an elevator system () comprising at least one elevator (-), which elevator system () is controlled by an elevator control () comprising a destination call allocation control, wherein passenger IDs are inputted into at least one I/O-device () of the elevator system (), whereafter based on the passenger ID a destination call is issued comprising the floor of the I/O-device () as departure floor and a preset or inputted destination floor as destination floor of the elevator call. According to the invention when a new destination call is issued, it is checked whether or not a destination call is still pending under the same passenger ID, and if a destination call of said person is still pending, either the new call or the pending call is cancelled.

Method for allocating elevator calls and elevator system

According to an aspect, there is provided a method for managing elevator cars in a multi-car elevator shaft system. The method comprises determining, by an elevator control entity, the optimum number of elevator cars for a given time of a day in the multi-car elevator shaft system; and commanding, by the elevator control entity, at least one elevator car into at least one elevator car storage or back to service from the at least one elevator car storage based on the determination, wherein elevator cars in the at least one elevator car storage act as standby elevator cars for the multi-car elevator shaft system.

Managing elevator cars in a multi-car elevator shaft system

According to an aspect, there is provided a method for determining the number of elevator cars in a two-shaft multi-car elevator system. The method comprises determining the number of active elevator cars N in the two-shaft multi-car elevator system by wherein RTT is a round trip time of the two-shaft multi-car elevator system, arr is the arrival rate of passengers, a is a car load factor, and carsize is the number of passengers one elevator car is able to carry.

Managing the number of active elevator cars in a multi-car elevator shaft system

According to an aspect, there is provided a method for forecasting elevator passenger traffic of an elevator group. The method comprises training a statistical traffic model describing a traffic profile for a specific cycle with historical timestamped origin-destination passenger counts, obtaining timestamped origin-destination passenger counts for a current cycle, generating an elevator passenger traffic forecast based on the trained statistical traffic model and the timestamped origin-destination passenger counts for the current cycle, and outputting the elevator passenger traffic forecast for use by an elevator group control.

Forecasting elevator passenger traffic

A method for the call allocation in an elevator group uses a call allocation unit of an elevator group control. In the call allocation unit, passenger flow data of the elevator group is used to adapt call allocation parameters to improve the performance of the elevator group. The public traffic data is retrieved from at least one public transportation system, and is used to supplement expected passenger flow data for the adaption of call allocation parameters.

Method for the call allocation in an elevator group

A method and a control device for controlling an at least one elevator are described, by which an arriving traffic intensity is detected, the traffic intensity being a number of passengers arriving at the at least one elevator during a traffic intensity determination period, a traffic amount value is determined by comparing the traffic intensity to a maximum building population, wherein the maximum building population is a maximum number of people in a building, and the at least one elevator is controlled based on the determined traffic amount value.

Peak traffic detection according to passenger traffic intensity

An arrangement of counting passengers in an elevator using two separate counting mechanisms is disclosed. The elevator car typically has a curtain of light arranged to the door and a load weighing device arranged to measure the weight of the elevator car. From the information recorded by the curtain of light and the load weighing device, it is possible to count the number of passengers. The reliability of the counting results can be improved by processing the counting results for forming a combined counting result that provides a more reliable counting result when the independent counts deviate from each other.

Passenger counting arrangement

Modern large buildings and public places are equipped with a plurality of elevators, exits and points of interest for fluent movement. The passenger flows in a building or public place can be traced and modelled by using statistics and information regarding current state of the modelled building or public place. The information derived from this model can be used for controlling elevators, escalators and similar in the building more efficiently. The same information may be used also for guiding passengers in the building or public place to use other transportation means so that the duration high traffic situation can be reduced or sometimes completely avoided.

Evacuation controller

A method for allocating an elevator in an elevator system constructs passenger batch size distributions for each pair of floors in a building based on passenger batch journeys, each passenger batch journey defining at least the origin and destination floor of the journey, the number of passengers relating to the journey and the time of the journey; receives a call for an elevator; estimates the number of passengers waiting behind the call based on the passenger batch size distributions; and allocates the call to an elevator being able to serve the estimated number of passengers.

Passenger number based call allocation in an elevator system

A method for a passenger-allocation in a multi-deck elevator group where the decks of the elevator cars are stacked above each other and being mounted in a car frame to be moved synchronously in an elevator shaft utilizes an improved allocation strategy. The method is performed by a control unit to dispatch the elevator cars for serving any passenger call which can be entered as a landing call or a car call, wherein a call creates plural allocation proposals calculated by an optimization algorithm carried out by the control unit for dispatching an elevator to a passenger call. The allocation proposals are then processed in a routing algorithm defining one serving deck to be taken for the allocation of a specific call, which routing algorithm is restarted for any further incoming call independent of whether a further incoming call is creating new elevator allocation proposal(s) or when a reallocation timeout has passed. A computer program carrying out the method is further disclosed.

Routing optimization in a multi-deck elevator

A method of assigning destination call in an elevator group forms chromosomes including genes where each gene is a correlation of a call and an elevator trip, the possible round trips are calculated, each round trip is evaluated for optimization procedure. The calls are assigned to the elevators by the destination call control based on the best chromosome determined.

Allocating destination calls using genetic algorithm employing chromosomes

A method for evacuating people with an elevator system. The method including identifying an evacuation mode in the elevator system; determining the amount of people in each building floor to be evacuated by a normal evacuation service of the elevator system and whether there exists at least one person to be evacuated who is entitled to a prioritized evacuation service; calculating an estimated evacuation waiting time for each floor to be evacuated by the normal evacuation service, wherein the calculation takes into account that the at least one person allowed to the prioritized evacuation service is evacuated first; and causing display of the estimated evacuation waiting time iii each building floor to be evacuated by the normal evacuation service.

Elevator evacuation system configured to account for prioritized evacuation

The invention relates to a method and arrangement for closing doors of an elevator that comprises at least an elevator shaft, a car running along guide rails, in the shaft and equipped with a car door, landing doors at each landing floor, a hoisting machinery, a necessary roping system and shaft equipment, and a control system for controlling the activities of the elevator. According to traffic situations controlled by the control system of the elevator the door open time of the car doors and landing doors is reduced by speeding up the closure of the doors, and at the same time the passengers are informed about the speed-up.

Method and arrangement for closing doors of an elevator of a multi-car elevator shaft system

The invention improves control of wear and tear of the elevators in an elevator group having a plurality of elevators and at least one group control unit. The actual usage of each elevator is recorded, and the group control unit executes at least one allocation algorithm for selecting which elevator of the elevator group is used to serve a call. The allocation algorithm compares the actual usage of at least two elevators against respective target usages and selects the elevator having its actual usage most deviating from the target usage to serve an outstanding call. With the invention, the wear and tear of elevators may be balanced, or certain elevators may be set to reach the end of the maintenance period sooner.

Growing community of inventors

Helsinki, Finland

Marja-Liisa Siikonen