2020 International Conference on Power, Instrumentation, Control and Computing (PICC)

Touchless controls for passenger elevator

Sumit Kumar Vaish1 Dr. A.K.D. Dwivedi2 Deepam Dubey3

Department of Electronics Design & Department of Electronics Design & Department of Electronics Design &
Technology Technology Technology
2020 International Conference on Power, Instrumentation, Control and Computing (PICC) | 978-1-7281-7590-4/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/PICC51425.2020.9362353

National Institute of Electronics & National Institute of Electronics & National Institute of Electronics &
Information Technology Information Technology Information Technology
Gorakhpur, India Gorakhpur, India Gorakhpur, India
sumitvaish@gmail.com akddwivedi@nielit.gov.in deepamdubey@nielit.gov.in

Abstract— Control panels play important role in providing
interaction with machines. Centuries ago, it started with
mechanical switches and has now reached to capacitive
touchscreens after a long journey. All these require a contact or
touch and in case of capacitive touchscreen it requires some
specific type of material through which the contact is made at
any point on the touchscreen surface. During the pandemic, the
rise of new normal created the need of touchless. Example of
passenger elevator can explain the need. Passenger elevators
have switches installed outside the elevator cabin, are known as
Landing operating panel and inside the elevator cabin are
known as COP Cabin operating panel which are touched by lot
of people and people are using them fearfully during pandemic.
We have developed control panels with which elevators can be
operated without the need of touching any surface by fingers
and it does not require any special kind of material, stylus or
device. Our design is based on Infrared light field which is
invisible, low cost and light weight. The design is also easy to
install.
Keywords—touchless, gesture, infrared, light, microcontroller
I. INTRODUCTION
There are lot of machines which are used publicly.
Elevators, ATMs, POS machines, Ticket vending machines,
kiosks are the examples which clearly show that public
machines have become a part of our daily life. Due to rapid
urbanization we need to increase such machines so that a large
number of people can be served speedily in less time and by
doing so the rush can be avoided. Multistory buildings,
growing multistory apartment culture need more and more
passenger elevators. Lot of people came up with the idea of
proximity sensor based, magnetic sensor based, smartphone
based and foot pedal-based solutions. These systems need
some practice for the operation. For the proximity-based
system [1] the user needs to point the finger precisely before
the proximity sensor as the proximity sensor cannot detect the
finger if the finger is out of FOV (Field of view) of proximity
sensor. The other method in which hall effect-based sensors
[5] are installed behind the switch requires a magnet for the
operation. The user will bring the magnet near the desired key
and the hall sensor behind the switch will sense the magnet
and activate the circuit. In this the user need to carry a magnet
with him which is not possible all the time. Smartphone
phone-based application have been developed recently by
elevator manufacturer companies likes KONE, JOHNSON
with which the elevator can be operated by sending command
through smartphone application through Bluetooth or WiFi.
There is no universal application so the users need to have
different applications for every manufacturer’s elevator. Also,
it makes the process lengthy and device dependent. In case the
user does not have smartphone he/she will not be able to use
the elevator and the process will become lengthy at first time
in downloading, installing and pairing the application with
specific elevator. The need of hour is fast, easy and low-cost
solution. We need a solution which does not depend on any
specific design, material or training. Although the touchless
system can be developed in many other ways like camera
based imaginary surface using artificial intelligence, we have
developed the easy and low-cost system which requires very
less space and is very easy to adopt. Keeping in mind that the
operation remains as it is, we have developed a design that
solves the problem without adding any difficulty in the
existing system. Some companies have developed foot pedal-
based switch to avoid any touch by hand. The foot pedal based
mechanical system requires a lot of space as they need to be
installed in a row like structure and mechanical foot pedals are
vulnerable to dust and force as they require a lot of
maintenance. We are developing an easy touchless solution
with which these switches and control panel can be turned into
touchless using optoelectronics components. We are using
LEDs and photodiodes working in near infrared range to make
rows and columns. These rows and columns will be made of
near infrared light which is invisible to human. The
wavelength range of near infrared is 750 nanometers to 2500
nanometers. The LEDs and photodiodes which we are using
are sensitive to 850 nanometer infrared light.
II. CONSTRUCTION OF SYSTEM
A. Cabin operating panel
Since there are only two types of inputs required for
landing operating panel, we could use the gesture-based
sensors which works by waving hand in front of sensor
effortlessly. There are at-least 6 to 10 types of inputs required
inside the elevator cabin to operate it. The minimum size
elevators are installed for a 5-floor building so it will need at-
least 5 switches for floor selection and 3 to 5 more switches
for the operations like Door open, Door Close, Stop, Alarm
and Fan. Thus, in least case we need at least 10 buttons. Here,
we cannot use gesture-based input as it will make the process
tedious as in case, we want to select 3rd or 5th floor we have
wave our hand multiple times before the sensor and that takes
a lot of effort and time.
Here comes the idea of a simple invisible light plane made
with the combination of infrared photo diode and infrared
LEDs forming row and column. We found this idea to be
simplest among all after keeping the following points in mind.

978-1-7281-7590-4/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE

Authorized licensed use limited to: BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on June 19,2021 at 05:24:47 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 2020 International Conference on Power, Instrumentation, Control and Computing (PICC)
• They are cheap and widely available.
• We can increase and decrease the touch sensitive
area for every input. In simple words we can decide
the height and width of each button. Keeping the
button size large will make it more visible.
Here the second point is interesting which can be
explained briefly with the help of figure 1.1 and figure 1.2.
Figure 1.1 shows the basic construction of Cabin operating
panel.
Fig. 1.1 Basic diagram of Cabin operating panel
Fig. 1.1 shows the basic construction of Cabin operating
panel. Following are the components of Cabin operating
panel.
C1 LED, C2 LED, C3 LED = Column Infrared LEDs
850nm Wavelength
C1 PD, C2 PD, C3 PD = Column Infrared Photo Diodes
having highest sensitivity at 850 nm
R1 LED, R2 LED, R3 LED = Row Infrared LEDs
R1 PD, R2 PD, R3 PD = Row Infrared Photo Diodes
FOV (Field of view of photodiodes) = Shown in Blue
color.
Double of half angle = 6° shown in red color.
The infrared light emission has been shown in the figure
with dashed and dotted lines, which goes wider with the
distance from emitting LED. The LEDs have been chosen
with a half angle of 3° [2] (shown in Fig. 1.1). Each infrared
LED is targeting an Infrared Photodiode with certain Field of
view (shown in Fig. 1.1). These combinations of Infrared LED
and photodiode are making rows and columns which
intersects each other creating a matrix keypad like structure.
We observed that reflected infrared light emitted from LEDs
having wider half angle will affect other photodiodes. If we
select the LEDs having minimum half angle it will become
Authorized licensed use limited to: BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on June 19,2021 at 05:24:47 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
difficult to align the LEDs with photodiodes. So, we have
chosen optimum half angle after doing research with different
half angle LEDs and different FOV photodiode.
From Fig. 1.1 we can see that with 6 Infrared LEDs and 6
Infrared Photodiodes we are getting 9 intersection points.
These 9 intersection points are point of interest that work as
keys.
In another design we can change the height and width of
keys at intersection points. Fig. 1.2 shows how we can control
the width of keys.
In Fig.1.2 we can see that we have used two photodiodes
in series at R1PD location. This series combination increases
the effective Field of View (shown in blue color in Fig 1.2) at
photodiode side. The LED has been chosen with full angle of
12° or higher half angle of 6°. Here, since the two similar
photodiodes R1 PD and R1PD are in series, if any of them
does not receive the infrared light the current will reduce to
leakage current value or we can say no current will flow in the
series combination of R1 PD photodiodes. Connecting two
similar photodiodes in series and placing them together
adjacently increases the effective field of view. This cannot be
done by choosing a photodiode of higher field of view angle.
If we replace them with a photodiode of higher field of view
angle it will start receiving the light from any side and we will
not be able to stop the Infrared light on the photodiode by
putting our finger between the infrared emitter and infrared
photodiode.
Fig. 1.2 Cabin operating panel with higher height and width of keys.
Another advantage of choosing photodiode with small
field of view is to protect a corner side photodiode from
receiving the reflected infrared light from the infrared emitter
of adjacent arm. To be clearer about this let us take an example
that a finger (Shown in yellow color in Fig.1.3) was brought
to key 3 with an intention that it should stop the infrared light
coming from C3 LED to C3 PD and R1 LED to photodiode
R1 PD but it had been observed that some amount of light
coming from C3 LED reflected from finger (Unwanted
reflection from finger in towards photodiode R1PD is shown
in red color in Fig. 1.3) and Impinged upon R1 PD. It was
undesired and happened due the wide field of view angle
(shown in blue color in Fig. 1.3) of photodiode R1 PD. To
avoid such case, we have selected a photodiode with small
field of view and small sensitive area.
 2020 International Conference on Power, Instrumentation, Control and Computing (PICC)

Fig. 1.3 Showing reflection from adjacent Infrared emitter on adjacent

photodiode.

Fig. 1.5 Flow chart of Cabin operating panel program.

B. Landing operating panel

In our design we have used a tiny sensor which is a
combination of infrared photodiode, infrared LEDs placed in
such a manner that they can be triggered through certain
gesture patterns and accepts 6 types of gesture of which we
are using only two types. The control panel installed outside
of the elevator cabin is call landing operating panel i.e. LOP.
There are four photodiodes installed around single infrared
Fig. 1.4 Basic biasing circuit of IR photodiode and IR LED
LED. Each photodiode is isolated from the infrared LED
through a barrier to avoid any direct light coming from
From Fig. 1.4 it can be clearly seen that the IR Photodiodes infrared emitter. The basic element from the Fig. 1.6 are:
are connected in series and are in reverse bias. If we put our
finger or any non-transparent object between Infrared LED
and Infrared photodiode the reception of light will be • PD-U = Upper side photodiode
interrupted and the voltage across resistor R1 will go low.
When there is no object or finger between infrared emitters • PD-D = Down side photodiode
and infrared photodiode the photodiodes will conduct and • PD-L = Left side photodiode
keep the voltage across resistor R1 high. If any of the
photodiodes does not receive the infrared light the circuit will • PD-R = Right side photodiode
not conduct as the photodiodes are in series. From Fig. 1.3 it
is clear that the output across R1 goes low when finger or any
object is detected and goes high when there is not object or
finger.
To avoid any undesired reflected infrared light reception
from other infrared LEDs we will turn on only one LED at a
time and will read its corresponding photodiode with the help
of Analog to digital converter of microcontroller.
Following flow chart will show the programing approach
to scan the light field and detect the key.

Authorized licensed use limited to: BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on June 19,2021 at 05:24:47 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 2020 International Conference on Power, Instrumentation, Control and Computing (PICC)

when pressed. This simple construction and circuit diagram

make it possible to interface our system with the elevator’s
control panel easily and it also leaves the existing touch
switches working. In other words, both systems can work in
parallel and in case any of the system fails other will keep the
elevator working.

IV. FUTURE ENHACMENTS

In this design we are getting finger or object position in
the form of x, y coordinates. If we add another layer of similar
light frame just below the first light plane, we will be able to
read the depth as well. This will be helpful in making 3D
interface.

V. REAL TIME INSTALLATION

A. Cabin operating panel

Fig. 1.7 shows the real time photograph of cabin operating

panel at the time of installation and testing.

Fig. 1.6 Basic construction of Landing operating panel.

Here, we are using two types of gestures to call the

elevator or open the elevator’s door. The first gesture is
Waving hand in front of the sensor from upside towards down
side and waving hand in front of the sensor from down side to
upside (The green color arch in Fig. 1.6 is showing the path of
hand waving). When the hand is brought in upper front of the
sensor the infrared light from infrared LED impinges from
hand and after refection falls upon PD-U. Moving hand Fig. 1.7 Installed Cabin operating panel.
towards down side of the sensor the infrared light from
infrared LED impinges from hand and falls on the PD-D after Fig. 1.7 shows the installed cabin operating panel inside
reflection. Here, one thing is important that the infrared LED the elevator cabin. We can see the icons on the touchless
placed in the center of four photodiodes does not glow cabin operating panel but the photodiodes and infrared LEDs
continuously. It rather keeps blinking in a defined pattern at a are not visible. In the next figure we can see the infrared
very high speed. Also, all the four photodiodes are not read
LEDs and photodiodes as well.
together. We read the photodiodes one by one by activating
their circuit in a defined manner. The barrier between
photodiodes and infrared LED play important role. It protects
the photodiode from receiving the unwanted reflected light
from dust particles collected on surface.
It now becomes simple to understand that when PD-D is
detected just after PD-U the system recognizes this event as
waving hand towards down and when PD-U is detected just
after PD-D the system recognizes this event as waving hand
towards up.

III. INTERFACING WITH ELEVATOR CONTROL PANEL

If we go through the elevator’s control panel circuit
diagram, we found that there are multiple switches which are
SPST (single pole single throw) momentary push to ON type
switches. The switch is shorting the certain pin with ground
Fig. 1.8 Adjacent arms of frame holding infrared LEDs and photodiodes
Fig. 1.8 shows the two adjacent arms of frame which are
holding infrared LEDs and infrared photodiodes. We can see
that there could be a possible reflection of infrared light from

Authorized licensed use limited to: BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on June 19,2021 at 05:24:47 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 2020 International Conference on Power, Instrumentation, Control and Computing (PICC)
L5 or L6 towards R4 or R3 photo diodes. To avoid this, we
have chosen photodiodes with narrow field of view and
infrared LEDs with narrow half angle.
Fig.1.8 The complete frame structure holding infrared LEDs and
photodiodes.
Fig. 1.8 shows the frame in which R1, R2, R3 and R4 are
the photodiodes receiving the infrared light from infrared
LEDs L1, L2, L3 and L4. These two arms are creating
columns. C1, C2, C3, C4 are the infrared photodiodes
receiving infrared light from L5, L6, L7 and L8 and creating
rows. These four rows and four columns are making 16 keys.
Thus, increasing the density of rows and columns by
choosing LEDs with narrow half angle and photodiodes with
narrow field of view we can increase the number of
intersections and so the keys.
The voltage across each photodiode or across the series
resistor connected with photodiode is measured with the help
of Analog to digital converter of microcontroller. The output
pins of microcontroller are connected to optocouplers which
helps in grounding the desired pin of control panel. Here, the
use of optocoupler gives us the option to automatically pull
up the desired pin through the existing pull resistors used on
elevators control board. Thus, it helps in not adding any
parallel pull up resistor with already installed pull up
resistors.
Fig. 1.9 Circuit to convert the intersection points in to corresponding control
signal.
Authorized licensed use limited to: BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on June 19,2021 at 05:24:47 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Fig. 1.9 shows the optocouplers used at the output side to
ground the pins of corresponding switch. Here we have used
ATMEGA328U TQFP which has 8 analog to digital
converters. Due to lack of pins in ATMEGA328U in our
application we have further used ATMEL AT89S52
microcontroller which 32 Input output pins. Thus, with the
help if AT89S52 microcontroller we are converting the
outputs for multiple switches and driving input side of
optocouplers.
B. Landing operating panel
Fig. 2.0 showing the real time landing operating panel.
Here we have also used optocouplers for interfacing with
elevator’s control panel. To read the sensors we have used
ATMEGA328U analog inputs. Out of 8 analog input
channels we have used only two analog inputs as we are using
only up and down side infrared photodiodes to detect only
two types of gestures which are towards up and towards
down.
The maximum distance from which the gesture can be
sensed is about 3 CM. We have used a day light filter which
blocks the other wavelength lights and allows only the light
with wavelength of about 850nm. The two types of gestures
assign priority while landing the elevator at passenger’s floor.
Waving hand towards up sets the priority that elevator will
first move towards upper floor and waving hand towards
down sets the priority that elevator will first move towards
lower floor. The upwards and downward gesture saves the
Landing operating panel from false sensing if some walks by
the landing operating panel. If we design it to detect
horizontal gestures it may detect if someone walks by it.
Fig. 2.0 Landing operating panel
 2020 International Conference on Power, Instrumentation, Control and Computing (PICC)
VI. PREVIOUS WORK
[1]
A touchless solution by trilateration method of proximity
sensors has already been proposed [1]. Working with different
proximity sensors we found that proximity sensor’s Field of
view angle goes wider only when we go away from sensor and
[2]
as soon as we approach nearer to the sensor the sensor cannot
detect the object unless the object is very much aligned with [3]
the sensor. We have observed this practically. Proximity
sensors have certain field of view. Thus, if we adopt the
trilateration method with proximity sensor for touchless
system it will requires a large space and thus the size of control
panel will also become very large. This method can detect the [4]
object’s coordinate only when the object is far from the plane
on which the proximity sensors are installed.
[5]
[6]
Authorized licensed use limited to: BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on June 19,2021 at 05:24:47 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
REFERENCES
Cheng-Ta Chuang, Tom Chang, Pei-Hung Jau and Fan-Ren Chang,
"Touchless positioning system using infrared LED sensors," 2014
IEEE International Conference on System Science and Engineering
(ICSSE), Shanghai, 2014, pp. 261-266, doi:
10.1109/ICSSE.2014.6887946.
IRLED SELECTION GUIDE FOR Si114X PROXIMITY
APPLICATIONS (AN521).
D. Ryu, D. Um, P. Tanofsky, D. H. Koh, Y. S. Ryu and S. Kang, "T-
less : A novel touchless human-machine interface based on infrared
proximity sensing," 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on
Intelligent Robots and Systems, Taipei, 2010, pp. 5220-5225, doi:
10.1109/IROS.2010.5649433.
S. Freidank, M. Detert and S. Hirsch, "Multitouch touchless — A new
approach with optical proximity sensing," 2017 7th IEEE International
Workshop on Advances in Sensors and Interfaces (IWASI), Vieste,
2017, pp. 145-149, doi: 10.1109/IWASI.2017.797423.
US6854566B2 UNITED STATES PATENT
Hindonics is a startup led by (1st author Sumit Kumar Vaish) of this
paper. Hindonics name can be seen on some images in the paper,