44 Soptomber 2019tu) ET ALS ay) 3 ATF EN at CARIS PE Ha Ha GU YOU UP.“ » Septomber 2019 ‘You waLk To the elevator, you hit the Up button, and ‘you wait. And you wait. An« Yyouwait, There reallyisagood reason ‘the lift keeps rising away from you. And it's not karmic pay- ‘back for never returning your neighbor's pruning shears, With every press of a but- ‘ton, we've given our elevators a doozy of a computational challenge. Theelevatorsystem must decide which carto send for you, and when. It must ‘choose whether to go up from ‘the fifth floor to collect those people on the seventh before ‘coming down to the lobby ‘to answer your call. It must consider who's been waiting longer, and which of the many paths isthe most efficient and least painful for everybody. Elevator traffieisanelaborate, delicate dance, and once you see the steps, you can’t help but tip your hat to the engi- neers who choreograph itall, Elevator routing wasn’t always so complex. The ear- liest electric elevators were controlled by human opera~ tors. An attendant standing inside would drive the lift up and down with a throttle of sorts, stopping wherever he or adispatcher sawa waiting ‘passenger. But humans proved to be clumsy, expensive, and pronetto strikes. By the 1950s, electrical switches took over. For elevators to direct themselves, engineers had to spell out rules for when to go where, The simplest method ‘was for the elevators to shut- tle back and forth between predefined floorsat scheduled intervals. Itwas like taking a ‘bus; youwaited forthe :10 ear up tothe 10th floor, and then found your way from there. This, of course, was grossly inefficient, During busy times of day, theelevatorcabs would ‘waste everyone's time sitting ataflooruntil their scheduled departure. During off-peak hours they would make point. less empty trips. By 1965, liftengineers set- ‘led on the model we all know ‘and ove and sometimes hate: Passengers push buttons to call elevators, and the eleva- tors respond to these requests But here it gets tricky. AS requests todifferent parts ofa building pile up, how does an elevator decide where to go? The Pain Index WHAT Is THE perfect ele- vator system? Does it serve ‘the person who's been wait- ing the longest? Or always goto the closest eall? Where does it make the compromise between speedy service and. keepingenergy usage down? Elevator engineers grapple with all these questions, and none of them are as simple as ‘they seem. Clearly, an eleva. tor should try to reduce travel, ime. But haw should it prior- itize your time? If you wait a minute instead of 20 seconds for aearto come, is thatthree times as bad, or perhaps six or ‘even nine times worse? Even the most basicof these goals sn'tagiven. Sometimes, it’s actually better to make a ‘passenger's ride longer. Imag- inetwoscenarios,onein which yourelevatortakes 10 seconds {o arrive and then one min. ute to reach your destination (Fig 1), and another in which ‘each portion takes 30 seconds (Fig2). Many people find wait ing so painful that they'd prefer the first option, even though they'd reach their destination 10 seconds later. Accordingly, some elevators ‘optimize not for time, but foracustomized pain index, in which the computer system ‘weighs the awfulness of each Kindof delay. Further complicating mat- ters are an elevator's many constraints. It has physical limits on its speed, and ithas only a second or two to choose its next move. Italsos! do anything that w ously piss off passenge bypassing someone'sdesired floor without stopping, which isjust asking for a fist in the control panel. A good system willbalanceall thesegoals and ‘worries, even when you needed. tobe upstairs 10 minutes ago. The Elevator Algorithm ‘THE EARLIEST AND sim- plest reasonable approach to elevator dispatching is still 1. Aslongas there's some- one inside or ahead of the elevatorwho wantstogo inthe current direction, keep head- ingin that direction. 2, Once the elevator has exhausted the requests in its current direction, switch directionsif there’sarequestin the otherdirection. Otherwise, stopandveaitforacall. > (ay fal Even the people who built the software often don't know why it's doing what it's doing.oe Septomber 2019 ‘Thisiswhy your typicalele- vator bay has call buttons for upand down: so theear that’s already heading skyward can stop to collect anybody who's going up. This policy doesn’t account for most ofthe factors mentioned earlier, but it’s not abad place to start. Theeleva tor algorithm iseasy to follow and fairly energy-efficient, and everyone gets an elevator within one round-trip. (1 very same algorithm controls the read-and-write head on many harddrives) smalloffice and apartment buildings, which don't need to squeeze every bit of efficiency out of their elevators, tend to use this simple approach. In larger buildings, though, col- lective control starts to cause problems. The elevator ser- vices the middle floors each time it passes by, but it'snever going to stop by the basement ‘nits way tofloar 7.Sothe wait at the very top and very bot- tom, the areas most in need of elevators, can be anightmare. More importantly, large buildings usually have banks of elevators, not just one. If each follows the elevator algorithm, then under heavy traffic, the elevators start leapfrogging each other a few floors at atime. And they bunch up in the middle of the building, potentially even serving the same calls twice. ‘Tohandle these larger set- ups, engineers developed a slew of tricks. Justhaving the lifts talking toeach other goes along way. If Car 1 is headed up, Car2 can instead handle lobby request. Furthermore, lifts can be assigned to spe- cific clusters of floors. You also may have seen eleva. tors hanging out in a lobby, doors wide open, This is the parking strategy, where idle elevators return toa com- ‘monly requested floor. Thanks to traffie prediction and real- time monitoring, the elevators can switch between strategies to adapt to the morning or close-ofbusiness rush, Does it serve the person who's been waiting the longest? Or always go to the closest call?Because they know exactly where you're going, these sys- tems edge closer to perfect Computing ‘Thm, ope hdd 5 the same oor banched Complexity together turnings eleva rue cour twat reallycar- Such younightthenhaveto tpatewflorshapsened inthe ation digtchgetensesten bios whenseprogrummabe ifthe rons depend TFeomemnehadanextceator_ themoring rus, when ne Tomingriatagy Ungpnolom, topecty eke saer the ideaandwaitforabuilding can reduce overall trip times. tegen lnend theycoull inaeatenwon wht fewer insoftware simulations. time, theycan afford toeollect Re ‘Aflurryof new algorithms — yousooner toreduce the men- rteryurflor onthe hypadoutede hitthe shafts. One strategy, talanguish of waiting. buena om still popular today, is alled With all of these strat- “estimatedtimeofarrivalcon- egy options, engineers are trol.” Basieally, thecomputer faced with a new problem of considers all cars moving choosing the best algorithm. toward acall andassigns the One of the most successful, one it thinks will get there approaches has been to let mentonits own in simulation. the fastest. Another favorite a computer decide. Using At each moment, the sys- was to alw nelearningtechniques, tem inspects the state of ea urgentcalltothecarpredicted engineers can specify what simulated elevator and the tocreate thebestoutcomefor success looks like, then let parameters ofeach outstand- that passenger: minimize theelevator controllerexperi- ing request, decides what to yshand the most _ mac! journey time, use the least do, and measures the results. energy, ot whatever else th The software eventually learns designers prioritized. a policy for each combination: The apex of the comput- of factors. With these more : rized control is destination sophisticated policies, even e dispatch, which yoaeanexpe- the people who built the soft Fi rienceifyou visit skyscrapers ware often don'tknow why t's a builtor modernized since the doing what t'sdoing 5 1990s. In these buildings, : ratherthan simply pressing up i ordown, you enter what floor : you want to goto, and it tells i you which elevator wil com 8 i Sopteaber 2017 69