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Smart Elevators Coming to Seattle
coaxial writes "Fujitec has unveiled a new elevator system for Seattle's Metropolitan Park West Tower. The new system uses touchpanels to group users by destination. Riders may wait slightly longer for the proper car, but the overall ride is shortened because the car stops less."
You know, down is nice...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
From TFA:
"One lady walked up to the kiosk, and I told her to enter her floor number, and she said, 'That's ridiculous,' " said Tim Mooney, Fujitec's west regional vice president, who was in Seattle for the launch.
The real-world functionality of this system should be an interesting battle between computer-simulated idealism and human greed. Ideally, everyone will be happy if their overall travel time decreases. But in reality, each one of the riders wants to have the fastest possible time all to himself, to heck with averages. The easiest way to game the system might be to simply enter your floor number over and over, to fool the computer into thinking there's an increased demand for that floor. Voila, private elevator!
It's almost like a test case for the collapse of communism. If everyone simply gave according to their abilities and received according to their needs, everyone would get to work sooner. But as soon as one guy punches his floor a dozen times and gets his private car delivered, the whole darned thing breaks down.
Or to put it another way, in Soviet Russia, Elevator calls YOU!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Hmmm, I smell an upgrade coming.. incorporate fingerprint scanning software into the touchpad.. and send an elevator car full of convicted felons crashing to the earth...
*EXCELLENT*
Don't anthropomorphize computers: they hate that.
Next, they'll give it a personality. A cheerful personality.
At this rate, Douglas Adams will overtake Clarke as the SF writer who predicts the future.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
It's so good to be alive these days. The hours I spend each day riding up to the 9th floor of my building could be exchanged for time spent waiting on the ground floor with dozens of other (now happy) travelers.
Thank you, Smart Elevator Company!
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Human nature I suppose.
crazy dynamite monkey
Way back in the day I used to do some IT work for a company that made elevator buttons for the big elevator companies. It was one of the oddest companies you had ever seen.
I used to ask them why the basic "up/down" button was never replaced with a better control system -- you could request the floor you wanted to go to on the outside of the elevator instead of the inside. Sure it would cost more (needing buttons at every floor) but you could prioritize the elevator's path, saving money and time in the long run.
They told me it would never happen -- elevators would always be as they were. I guess he was mostly right, since it is now 10 years later and we still have up/down buttons, long waits, and no real efficiency in destination planning. I actually used to consider about once a year writing a paper on sorting the elevator destinations real time based on where people were and where they would be heading.
I'm surprised it finally happened.
A few things I wish elevators had (some jokingly just out of frustration):
1. On/off toggle. The idiot that hits the call button ten times would only toggle the button on and off 5 times. Let him wait, I hate the clicking sound.
2. On/off toggle in the elevator. Have you had the kid hit 10 buttons? I have. Many times. Have you had some idiot hit a few buttons by accident? I get it every week. Not that I'm in a rush, but come on, think before you hit a button.
3. Early elevator arrival notification. Tell me which elevator will be the one I'll be entering. I've been in some buildings where I'll miss 3 elevators because they don't notify you which one to wait by. Maybe they do this to prevent people from crowding the doors, but I'd rather people learn etiquette than have the crazy rushes you see in some Chicago lobbies.
4. VIP floor access. Pay $1 and get to your floor immediately.
5. BING muting. Have you been in these elevators that have to BING at every floor, even when you're going to the 33rd from the 1st? Yeesh, give me a mute button.
6. Free spray deodarant in each elevator. Talk about needing to teach people etiquette.
Homer approaches an elevator somewhere in the plant and pushes the down button.
Homer: Whew! I made it the whole day without seeing her again.
[The elevator arrives and Homer gets in. The door closes and he notices he's crammed in with Mindy]
Aah! I mean, hello!
Mindy: [awkward] Heh...I guess we'll be going down together -- I mean, getting off togeth -- I mean --
Homer: That's OK. I'll just push the button for the stimulator -- I mean, elevator.
Developers: We can use your help.
The elevators in the Marriott Marquis on Times Square work exactly like this, and they have been there for a while.
--RED
Actually, the wait time for an elevator will be shorter. However, because the user will not get to ride the first elevator whose door opens, the perceived wait time will be longer.
i think the best solution to this problem would be to upgrade it to web 2.0 using AJAX and an RSS/Atom feed.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
"One lady walked up to the kiosk, and I told her to enter her floor number, and she said, 'That's ridiculous,'
Apparently my mother-in-law was in Seattle this week.
In the Times Square Marriott here in NYC, in the lobby each elevator has a keypad where you key in the floor you want to go to, and then it shows you on an LED display which elevator number you want to go to. It is actually kind-of confusing, because you type in one number and it gives you another, but after you clear that hurdle, it works great. You get in an elevator, it stops on your floor without further input, and continues to its next destination. I think about that elevator system a lot, despite only ever having used it twice.
5. BING muting. Have you been in these elevators that have to BING at every floor, even when you're going to the 33rd from the 1st? Yeesh, give me a mute button.
The dings aren't for you. Be glad that you can fucking see.
I think the BING sounds are for the benefit of blind riders, who can count the number of BINGs to determine which floor they're on. The same goes for the one-BING-for-up, two-BING-for-down tones that accompany each door opening.
For more information, click here.
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
So this means you'll have to see the same people everyday in the elevator? That sucks. I enjoyed seeing the attractive women from the other floors every once in a while.
7. A button to temporarily override that godawful buzzing sound if the door is left open too long.
Instead of messing with elevator, my prof used a bit of social psychology. He had mirrors installed next to the elevator on every floor. Apparently, the self-absorbed students and faculty looked at themselves in the mirrors while waiting for the elevator, and lost track of their waiting time. From what I remember, complaints about the slow elevators got reduced to about 1/2.
How about just anouncing the floor number before the elevator stops?
How about putting an overly complex electronics system into what is a simple mechanical device? The ding can be triggered by simple mechanical means. KISS. I'm sure you'd bitch a lot more when the elevator had to be taken out of service to troubleshoot the voice system.
When they changed the elevators at the Marriott Marquis Times Square, not everyone was impressed.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
A voice system is complex? My neighbor had a Halloween pumpkin that said 50 different phrases in gorgeous clarity that he paid around $10 for at the drug store.
Sorry, but I don't buy it. In fact, I bet in 10 years the bing WILL be gone. Voice response makes more sense than trying to count bings.
Also not to mention the matter of language. 33 isn't "Thirty-Three" in every language. But 33 dings is 33 in any language.
Stewie: "Yes, we all love 'Mr. Plow'! Oh, you've got the song memorized, do you? SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE! That is exactly the kind of idiot you see at Taco Bell at 1 in the morning!"
Seriously, just because there was a Simpsons about Homer riding in an elevator, does it necessitate quoting?
I'm fucking sick of people who bitch about things that are put in place to help our disabled neighbors
I sick of people like you who force people like me to do something against our will.
First, my brother-in-law is fully disabled, and we will be taking care of him when my mother-in-law passes on.
Second, my other brother-in-law had MS (and died recently) and he was wheelchair bound.
I deal with disabled people in my family, and I have some friends who are disabled as well. They agree with me that the ADA laws are made in order to control businesses and take care of cronies (who own many companies that handle ADA compliance).
My experience as a business owner:
A bar I used to go to was upstairs. They had no elevator. The 2 wheelchair bound customers was always helped up the stairs by the bouncers, and they never had a complaint. The bar had $1 beers. When they had a small kitchen fire, they had to close down because the repairs couldn't be performed without updating the club to ADA compliance -- requiring $150,000 in upgrades. The building to this day is unused for this reason.
My church received a $1 million donation of a building we needed to expand. The building was built in 1953, like an old fashioned church. It has great acoustics (I direct video and sound). We need to knock out a wall to handle the additional 100 people we're expecting to come. We can't. The previous church installed a $50,000 elevator, but the ADA compliance people say we need to put one in the front of the building (there isn't room). We can't expand.
A neighbor of mine recently became disabled. He called a company to build a ramp so he can get up to his home. Because of government mandates of ADA compliance, the price of building ramps is over 3 times higher than it should be given the amount of work that is being performed. Companies know they can charge more because they are mandated to do work.
The law doesn't help the disabled, it helps the enabled who happen to have on bigger disability: they're friends with those in office.
That's simply false and doesn't even merit a response.
Let's see how I can pwn this comment with a response of some articles covering how the disabled are hurt by the ADA laws and complaince regulations:
If You Weren't Disabled Before the ADA, You Are Now by Greg Perry
ADA Success? At What?
What is disabled?
These are my top 3 favorite articles (different authors, same website that keeps a good list of pro-liberty pieces). Read them and you'll see that the ADA is not helpful.
By the way, I have disabled friends and family who all agree it is harder to get a job and costlier to be disabled now than 10 years ago. What is your basis to repudiate what they've told me? Are you disabled? Do you live with a disabled person? Do you employ disabled people? I have a full time IT tech that is deaf who has worked for me for 3 years, and I pay him double what he received at his previous job. I also have a blind sales person who travels for me (he's legally blid 20/400 in his best eye) internationally. I do think I have something to say over what you do, my "theory" is based on facts in dealing with the disabled. Your "theory" seems to be based on class warfare.
It's stupid in that it doesn't take into account user stupidity.
This sounds like another high tech effort to solve a problem which really isn't a big problem. There are probably many large buildings where a system like this makes sense, but from personal experience I know that this tech sometimes causes more headaches than it solves.
In the late 1990s, I worked at the AAAS building in Washington, DC. AAAS is the publisher of Science magazine, which most of you have heard about. The AAAS headquarters building is this sleek 12-story high tech edifice designed by famous architect I.M. Pei. It was built it the mid-90s and it features a smart elevator system which requires that people select their floor and then the elevator bunches people up for rides.
The elevator system was pretty cool, but the "smart" system wasn't so smart. Over several years of operation it became obvious to the staff that the elevator system was contributing to a dysfunctional organizational culture. People in different departments on different weren't interacting in the same way they would if they had been randomly grouped together for "inefficient" elevator rides. There were two bunches of three floors which had an atrium with an open staircase, but the building also discouraged using the stairs between floors because of security reasons. We were always rescuing people who couldn't get out of the stairways.
The joke became that the only time the staff in the association mingled was at Christmas parties and at the annual meeting. The smart elevator system actually worked against people in the organization getting to know each other through casual and chance elevator encounters. The "smart" elevator did a good job of putting co-workers together for rides to the same floor, but it also worked against social cohesion in the organization.
This system works for an office building like the one I work in (we have it since last summer) where every body understand how it works and there are security people to explain the system to the ocational visitor. For a public access location like an hotel where 90% of the people is new every week it's a nigthmare.
16,777,216 comments ought to be enough for any forum!
So you are part of the "majority wins, minorities eat it" crowd? I hate to break reality to you, but while you seem willing to help and employ people with disabilities, not everyone is so kind hearted. Such as the time I saw a blind man attempting to cross a street and got off course and just about killed when the light changed and instead of someone assisting the man, they just raced off the line taking the *cane* out of his hand when they clipped it. Or the many horn honking engine revving idiots when a wheelchair isn't getting out of the intersection in time... while pedestrians walk right by the struggling chair user.
Inside buildings it isn't much better, with people stampede out of elevator shafts and showing *none* of the concern for the blind potential passenger. I say potential because after they stampede out, a stampede goes in, leaving the blind man in the dust.
Perhaps these problems are unique to our snowbird + college student landscape here and you live somewhere that has fluffy bunnies and rainbows are forever in the sky. Or perhaps you simply choose to see your kindness as all encompassing. It isn't, and I get so infuriated with the way people treat others that it hurts. Yet... you suggest that the things that help the disabled be *self sufficient* (when clearly the people around them aren't interested in bearing the burden of even a second's courtesy) should not exist because "it inconveniences everyone".
So, when you figure out how the heck to form a "better society", could you notify the rest of the world so they could suddenly take others into consideration instead of existing in their self absorbed world? In the meantime, could you *stop* attempting to pretend that a few bumps on a sign somehow injures you? The blind that *I* knew in the college environment were *very* dependent upon the accommodations that were made, and when they had to enter a legacy building without such accommodations they had great difficulty making it to classes: to the point where they would cancel the class and hope it would be rescheduled somewhere they could get. Because the classmates had better things to do than "walk the gimp" (actual quote) to class.
Sig under construction since 1998.