Procedure for the selection of an elevator in an elevator group

Abstract: Procedure for selecting an elevator in a group consisting of elevators (2-7) serving the floors (K1-K18) of a building (1), each floor being provided with call input devices (11-14) for the input of calls, said elevator group having a group control unit (21,22) controlling the group and provided with at least one computer. On the basis of the call sent by a call input device, the group control unit finds out which call input device has been used for issuing the call and selects one of the elevators (2-7) serving the floor in question on the basis of the passengers' positions on the landing as determined from the information thus obtained.

Description: The present invention relates to a method for selecting an elevator in a group consisting of elevators serving the floors of a building, each floor being provided with call input devices for the input of calls, said elevator group having a group control unit controlling the group and provided with at least one computer. The elevators in an elevator group should be so laid out that the distances between the elevators are as short as possible to allow the passengers to move in a short time to that elevator whose door is opened, thus allowing the door to be closed as quickly as possible. For architectural reasons, this is not always the case, but the distances between elevators is increased due to many factors, such as the presence of stairs or equivalent between the elevators. Moreover, in the case of elevator groups with several elevators placed oppositely, the space between the elevators is often furnished with flowers, easy chairs etc., so a passenger waiting for an elevator must get around these obstacles if an elevator on the other side arrives first. This must be taken into account in the control of the elevator group by using longer door-open times, which leads to a considerable loss of transportation capacity as the doors are often kept open longer than necessary. An elevator group should be so structured that, dimensioned in accordance with common practice, it is capable of transporting all passengers even during busy rush hours without the passengers having to queue up on the landings. For many reasons, this is generally not the case in large elevator groups. One of the principal reasons is that during peak traffic in large elevator groups a small number of passengers travel in the direction opposite to the prevailing peak traffic direction. These passengers usually travel one by one, and keeping the doors open for an unduly long time for them means a considerable fall in the transportation capacity at a time when it should be possible to use all the available capacity as efficiently as possible to cope with the peak traffic. In the case of a large elevator group, which in this context means five or more elevators working under the same group control system and serving the same floors, the elevator lobby should be made large enough to allow the passengers to move in it without difficulties and delays caused by insufficient space. However, this means that the distances e.g. between the outermost elevators will be large, and the opening of the doors separately for single passengers during peak traffic must be very carefully optimized, otherwise the transportation capacity will be reduced even more significantly due to the longer door-open times required by the size of the lobby and to the longer closing times caused by the large size of the doors generally used in large elevator groups. It is known that, in the determination of the transportation capacity of an elevator group, about one third of the time available to an elevator is dependent on the passengers' movements by the doors and in the door area, so improving the efficiency of door operations has a significant effect on the operation of the elevator group as a whole. Another weakness restricting the transportation capacity in the case of large elevator lobbies is that the passengers waiting for an elevator form a disordered, scattered crowd in front of the elevators. EP-A-0 440 967 and EP-A-0 445 419 represent prior art according to Articles 54 (3) and (4) EPC in respect of novelty. In certain previously known methods, passengers wanting transport in the direction opposite to the direction of the main traffic during heavy peak hours are not served at all during certain short periods, e.g. five minutes, or the standard of service offered to these passengers is lowered decisively by employing various control principles, e.g. by allowing only one elevator to serve calls for transport in the opposite direction. In newer microcomputer-based systems, the priorities of calls for transport in the direction of the peak traffic may be heightened in relation to calls for transport in the opposite direction. In business buildings, this is naturally a hindrance to the activities. Further inconvenience results from the fact that passengers who have to wait longer than others become too impatient to follow the guide signals and enter a car travelling in the wrong direction, reckoning that they will get faster to the destination by going first in the wrong direction and then back in the right direction. This kind of behaviour places an unnecessary additional load on the transportation capacity of the elevator group. In some of the current methods, this problem has been taken into account in the development of the principles for controlling elevator groups by letting the group control decide at a very early stage which elevator is to serve which floor. On the basis of this decision, the system performs a so-called advance signalling, which in this context means that, by means of signalling devices provided on the floors, the passengers are informed in good time as to which elevator is arriving, e.g. by blinking the appropriate direction arrows at the landings, whereupon, as the elevator starts decelerating after the group control system has made an irrevocable decision that the elevator shall stop, a final arrival signal is given e.g. with a continuous light in the direction arrow. In some situations, however, the operation of the system may depart from the advance signalling in as many as over 20% of the cases. This results in a considerable drawback because departures from the advance signalling cause confusion when the passengers waiting in the lobby after all have to use an elevator other than the one indicated by the advance signalling. A further drawback is that a cancellation after advance signalling generates a need for additional time for the passengers to move to a different elevator as they had already gathered in front of the expected elevator. Thus, the distance to another elevator may be still longer. To eliminate the reduction in transportation capacity resulting from long door-open times, a currently used method employs a door control system in which the length of the basic open time is set to a value depending on the dimensions of the lobby, but when an electric eye placed in the door opening indicates that passengers are entering the car, the door time for subsequently entering passengers is shortened considerably. People travelling in a group observe one another. Those standing closest reach the door soon enough, whereafter even the slowest have enough time to reach the car although the door times have been adjusted to a low value. This principle works fairly well in up- or down-peak situations in large business buildings, where it does not take long for a few passengers to gather in the lobby, but in the case of single passengers there is still a considerable loss of time. In the internal traffic in a building, this procedure does not bring any notable advantage. Furthermore, all the above-mentioned solutions have the common drawback that they are based on the assumption that single passengers follow the signalling. However, passengers travelling alone pay particularly little attention to the signalling. Similarly, old people, invalids and children often do not behave in accordance with the assumptions regarding passenger behaviour on which the solutions referred to are based. The object of the present invention is to eliminate the drawbacks mentioned above and to achieve a flexible and reliable method for increasing the transportation capacity of an elevator group. The features defining the method according to the invention for selection of an elevator on the basis of a call issued from a landing are presented in the claims. In the following, the invention is described in detail by the aid of an example by referring to the attached drawings, in which Fig. 1 presents a diagram of a large building with a bank of six elevators serving eighteen floors, and with a machine room together with the control equipment at the top. Fig. 2 represents the elevator lobby on the entrance floor in a case where the elevators are laid out according to the commonest rule for a group of six: three and three placed oppositely. Fig. 3 represents the elevator lobby on the entrance floor in the case of five elevators laid out according to the commonest rule for a group of five: all five side by side. Fig. 4 shows a block diagram representing and elevator group control system implemented using a serial communication bus. Fig. 5 presents an example illustrating a typical up peak situation. Fig. 6 shows a block diagram representing the allocation of a call issued from a landing. Fig. 1 presents a block diagram representing a large building 1 with six elevators 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 connected together as a group serving the entrance floor K0 and eighteen floors K1 -18. The figure also shows the machine room 8 of the elevators and the elevator lobby 9 on the entrance floor. Fig. 2 represents the entrance floor lobby 9 in the case of a six-elevator group laid out according to the commonest rule: three and three placed oppositely. The devices for issuing landing calls are placed by the doors 2' - 7' as follows: devices 11 and 12 on one side, devices 13 and 14 on the other side. Fig. 3 represents the entrance floor elevator lobby 9 in the case of five elevators laid out according to the fairly common rule by which all five elevators are placed on the same side and the call input devices 11, 13 are laid out in a known manner. Fig. 4 presents a block diagram representing the control system of an elevator group in which the elevators and call input devices are laid out as illustrated in Fig. 2. Connected to a serial communication bus 20 are a main group control computer, a stand-by group control computer 22, computers 23 - 28 for the control and adjustment of the elevators, computers 29 - 34 placed in the cars of the elevators, motor control systems 35 - 40 and the call input devices for different floors, comprising two parallel-connected sets of call buttons 41 - 56, each set consisting of four pairs of buttons. The group control computer 21 identifies the call input device used for calling an elevator. Fig. 5 illustrates a typical peak traffic situation in an office building. The action of the method of the invention is described on the basis of this example situation. In this figure, the situation is an up peak traffic condition, in which the prevailing traffic direction is up from the entrance floor, and in which there is some internal traffic within the building. The up-peak is generally the worst peak traffic situation, in which the advantages of the procedure are also best revealed. It is obvious to a person skilled in the art that the advantages of the invention become the more pronounced the larger the group is. In this group of five elevators placed side by side, the following traffic situation prevails: From the entrance floor, up-calls 101 and 102 have been issued, one of which may become active automatically because in the known solutions the calls are connected in parallel, and from the higher floors, two solitary down-calls 103 and 104. The waiting times for these calls at the moment of checking are 15 and 30 s. If there is nothing extraordinary in the elevator group or the situation (depending on the implementation and the weighting of traffic in the peak direction relative to traffic in the opposite direction), the optimization procedures used will arrive at a decision to send elevator 105 to serve call 104 and elevator 106 to serve call 103. Consequently, the person waiting, who is travelling downwards during the morning up-peak and is therefore most probably alone and remains standing near the button he has pressed, must walk from point 108 to point 107 when the advance signalling is given. The estimated time needed for covering this distance is generally 5 - 10 seconds. If the person really has walked to the door of the arriving elevator in time and the door control system works properly, i.e. tries to close the door almost immediately, the additional time lost due to unnecessary waiting is 0 s. In practice, some of the passengers do not notice, understand or care about the signalling, which means that they will not start moving until they see the doors opening. In the method embodying the invention, after the group control system has performed an optimization as described above, an additional optimization is performed, which, while the normal optimization decides to send elevator 105 to serve call 104 in the situation illustrated by the example, discovers that even elevator 106 could be sent to serve call 104 after a quite short additional delay and that calls 103 and 104 are almost equal with respect to goodness of service because the drive time (through two floors) is only a few seconds, so the group control computer sends elevator 106 to serve call 104. This means that when the elevator arrives at the landing, the possibly inattentive passenger will immediately notice the elevator as it comes close. Correspondingly, elevator 105 is reserved for serving call 103. In this case, passenger 109 will have to wait for some time, but on the other hand elevator 106 will not have to wait until the passenger has walked from location 109 to location 110. Thus, although the waiting time may be increased in the case of some passengers, the elevators need not wait so long with doors open for the entering passengers. Therefore, the group as a whole has a higher transportation capacity than it has without additional optimization, and so the average waiting times are also shorter. It is also obvious to a person skilled in the art that the limits for the service goodness of a computer-based control system can be set in accordance with the client's wishes, allowing the drawbacks suffered by single passengers in the interest of larger numbers of passengers to be counter-balanced according to the situation. To allow additional optimization, the method determines for each call input device the elevators from which the one to be sent upon a call to the landing in question is selected in the first place. The elevator to be sent is selected among those on the same side of the elevator lobby as where the input device through which the call was issued is located. The additional optimization can be effected e.g. only if the momentary load of the elevator group or the number of calls waiting to be served exceeds the limit set for a peak traffic condition. In a large elevator group, if the additional optimization cannot produce an adequate alternative for the selection of the elevator to be sent, then an elevator placed farther away from the call input device is selected, and the door-open time for this elevator is prolonged temporarily and the advance signalling announcing its arrival is given earlier than normally. To guide the passengers in a situation where calls are issued via several call input devices in the lobby, the signal light indicating the registration of a call is lit only for those call input devices through which a call has been issued. The additional optimization is performed on the basis of the oldest call in force. Fig. 6 shows an example of the allocation of a call issued from landing k. First, the call enters the normal call allocation block 201, where the best elevator is selected. Next, the method makes a selection between peak traffic and normal traffic condition in block 202. If the situation is normal traffic, then the call k is allocated to the best elevator in block 203. If a peak traffic condition prevails, then the system calculates in block 204 the drive times t1...tn for those elevators h1...hn which are located horizontally closer to the source of the call k than the "best elevator", h1 standing for the horizontally closest elevator, h2 for the second closest etc. After this, the system selects in blocks 205 - 207 the elevator to which the call is to be allocated by considering for which elevator the drive time minus the drive time of the "best elevator" is less than the corresponding penalty time, which increases with the elevator's order number based on the horizontal distance. If none of blocks 205 - 207 becomes true, then the door-open time for the "best elevator" is prolonged (block 208). It is obvious to a person skilled in the art that different embodiments of the invention are not restricted to the examples described above, but that they may instead be varied within the scope of the following claims. In addition to peak traffic situations, the method of the invention can also be applied during less busy traffic to provide better service to the passenger. For example, if normal optimization would result in the selection of an elevator that is horizontally very far away from the passenger, then a method according to a preferred embodiment of the invention performs a check to see if another elevator that is horizontally closer to the passenger could be sent to serve the call without an excessive delay.

Claims: Claims for the following Contracting States : AT, BE, CH, DE, ES, FR, GB, IT, LI Method for selecting an elevator in a group consisting of elevators (2-7) serving the floors (K1-K18) of a building (1), each floor being provided with call input devices (11-14) for the input of calls, said elevator group having a group control unit (21,22) controlling the group and provided with at least one computer, wherein the group control unit, based on the call sent by a call input device, finds out which call input device has been used for issuing the call and selects one of the elevators (2-7) serving the floor in question on the basis of the passengers' positions on the landing as determined from the information thus obtained and from other group control parameters, wherein an elevator is selected which is as close as possible to the passengers position on the landing. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that the group control system determines the distance of the passengers on each floor from the doors (2'-7') of different elevators of the group on the floor in question, and that said distance is the basis for the selection of the elevator to be sent to serve the call. Method according to claim 2, whereby the control system first performs a normal optimization to select the elevators to which the call could be allocated, characterized in that, after the normal optimization, an additional optimization is performed to choose from the elevators selected by the normal optimization the one which is to serve the call on the basis of said distance data. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that, for each call input device the elevators are determined from which the one to be sent upon a call to the landing in question is selected in the first place, and that the elevator to be sent is selected among those on the same side of the elevator lobby as where the input device through which the call was issued is located. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the elevator is selected among those located on the same side of the elevator lobby as the call input device through which the call was issued. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the additional optimization is performed on the basis of the oldest call in force. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that it is also possible to select an elevator located farther away from the call input device through which the call was issued, in which case the door-open time for the elevator is temporarily prolonged and the advance signalling indicating its arrival is given earlier than normal. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that, to guide the passengers, the signal light indicating the registration of a call is lit only for the call input device through which a call was issued first. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that, to guide the passengers in a situation where calls are issued via several call input devices in the lobby, the signal light indicating the registration of a call is lit only for those call input devices through which a call has been issued. Claims for the following Contracting States : SE, NL, LU, GR, DK Method for selecting an elevator in a group consisting of elevators (2-7) serving the floors (K1-K18) of a building (1), each floor being provided with call input devices (11-14) for the input of calls, said elevator group having a group control unit (21,22) controlling the group and provided with at least one computer, wherein the group control unit, based on the call sent by a call input device, finds out which call input device has been used for issuing the call and selects one of the elevators (2-7) serving the floor in question on the basis of the passengers' positions on the landing as determined from the information thus obtained and from other group control parameters. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that the group control system determines the distance of the passengers on each floor from the doors (2'-7') of different elevators of the group on the floor in question, and that said distance is the basis for the selection of the elevator to be sent to serve the call. Method according to claim 2, whereby the control system first performs a normal optimization to select the elevators to which the call could be allocated, characterized in that, after the normal optimization, an additional optimization is performed to choose from the elevators selected by the normal optimization the one which is to serve the call on the basis of said distance data. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that, for each call input device the elevators are determined from which the one to be sent upon a call to the landing in question is selected in the first place, and that the elevator to be sent is selected among those on the same side of the elevator lobby as where the input device through which the call was issued is located. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the elevator is selected among those located on the same side of the elevator lobby as the call input device through which the call was issued. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the additional optimization is performed on the basis of the oldest call in force. Method according to claim 1, characterized in that it is also possible to select an elevator located farther away from the call input device through which the call was issued, in which case the door-open time for the elevator is temporarily prolonged and the advance signalling indicating its arrival is given earlier than normal. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that, to guide the passengers, the signal light indicating the registration of a call is lit only for the call input device through which a call was issued first. Method according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that, to guide the passengers in a situation where calls are issued via several call input devices in the lobby, the signal light indicating the registration of a call is lit only for those call input devices through which a call has been issued.

Inventors: EKHOLM RALF, PARTANEN-JOKELA RIITTA, EKHOLM, RALF, PARTANEN-JOKELA, RIITTA
Applicants: KONE ELEVATOR GMBH
Application year: 1991
Main classification: B66B1
IPC codes: B66B1, B66B3, B66B13