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New Maglev Elevator Can Travel Horizontally, Vertically, and Diagonally (wired.co.uk)
An elevator that can move in any direction has been successfully tested by a German company named ThyssenKrupp. An anonymous reader quotes Wired UK:
The Multi is the first ropeless lift, built using the same magnetic levitation technology used in Japan's bullet train and proposed for the Hyperloop. In the same way the train slides along a track horizontally, the lift travels both vertically, horizontally and diagonally around a building riding an electromagnetic field, a system known as a linear drive. "If you can run a 500-tonne train on magnets at 500km/h you should be able to elevate a cabin of 500 kilograms or 1,000 kilograms at a speed of five metres per second," [ThyssenKrupp CEO Andreas] Schierenbeck said.
The elevator can cost 3 to 5 times more than a regular elevator -- but can handle higher buildings than a conventional elevator.
The elevator can cost 3 to 5 times more than a regular elevator -- but can handle higher buildings than a conventional elevator.
Next week on slashdot: phased energy weapons to be made available to security forces worldwide
Bit by bit, we're catching up with Star Wars technology.
That's like saying an American company named General Electric.
NT
Capt Kirk, Capt. James T. Kirk, you're wanted at Turbolift 1.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Wait, what? Elon Musk isn't involved? But.......how is that even possible? Everyone knows Musk is the world's only living inventor!
Wrong reference. This is clearly a Willy Wonka elevator.
The WONKAVATOR
PLEASE.
It's not you: I'm just this horrifically socially awkward with everybody.
They should call it a Turbolift. Yes, as in Star Trek. Just don't give it an AI, please.
...and watch it FALL!
... which is good because then you could harness that energy!
One way to think about elevators and high-rises is to start from the top. The uppermost part is a little building that only needs one elevator. As you add floors on the bottom they need more shafts so that you can fill and empty the building in a reasonable time. With conventional elevators, there is only one per shaft. (Although it can be more than one floor high.) At some point the next bottom floor you add will be all elevator shafts and unless you think you can make money from a more scenic view from the top, you stop. With this tech the elevators become cars on a vertical railway and can take on passengers without blocking shafts. Big gain.
On a 50 floor building an elevator 4'x6' will have a shaft a little larger plus a 10' waiting area in front of it, so say 15x8 or 120 feet square x 50 floors gives 6000 square feet. Times $1000 per square foot for grade A office space and your elevator is now taking up $6 million dollars worth of floor space.
Seriously? Do you think that wouldn't happen with conventional elevators if they had no emergency braking system?
Please let some kid named Charlie be the first to ride in it.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
No, not really. The ones with cables have a counterweight, so they tend to stay put, unless the cable snaps - that's when you need emergency brakes. The hydraulic ones will descend if there is a leak or power fail, but still at a relatively safe pace.
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
Came for the Star Trek reference. Was not disappointed. Thanks.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Seriously? Do you think that wouldn't happen with conventional elevators if they had no emergency braking system?
Exactly. ... but how would you install an emergency breaking system on a (contactless!) Maglev system without seriously restricting the the directions in which this can move? (diagonally...)
Maybe they do have a solution, but the article is entirely silent on the subject...
No, not really. The ones with cables have a counterweight, so they tend to stay put, unless the cable snaps - that's when you need emergency brakes. The hydraulic ones will descend if there is a leak or power fail, but still at a relatively safe pace.
There's more than one emergency break system on elevators. One is a wheel break on the pulley, which engages in the case of power loss (or in normal operation, while elevator is at a floor).
The other is the track break, which engages in the event where the rope snaps (clamps on the cabin that seize the metal tracks that guide the cabin).
Both would be difficult to put in place on a Maglev system.
Not really. Look at the Vancouver Skytrain or any other linear motor system in use. When the train stops, it puts wheels down and brakes.
The thing I'd be worried about here is the brakes failing due to weight restrictions being ignored, and that would be easily solved by having the elevator detect brake stress and automatically go out of service.
I doubt in practice the elevator will have such a free range of movement. Main benefit would be that the elevator could move into sidings for loading/unloading and allow others to pass. It looks like this has tracks, so a brake connected to the track should work.
I'm sure you are right. I was responding to the assertion that conventional elevators would fall if there is a power loss.
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
Nah, it's clearly the inferior Star Trek version. Can't go squareways.
Presumably some form of clamp on the elevator car that can be used as an emergency brake and safety lock against either the maglev power rail or an auxilliary safety rail as and when required, just as many current conventional elevators have. It may be able to move in any direction, but that's still dependant on there being a power rail alongside it in the direction it needs to go, which means many of the same safety designs would still apply - the only change is that to make the most of the maglev you need to avoid physical contact until required.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Exactly. ... but how would you install an emergency breaking system on a (contactless!) Maglev system without seriously restricting the the directions in which this can move? (diagonally...)
Contactless is not the same thing as impossible to make contact. It will ride in close proximity to the magnets/rails. Wouldn't be hard to come up with a system that would physically engage in the event of a problem.
What makes you think this is contactless?
This is a rope-less elevator using linear motors instead. There's still guides, etc
........ and watch its brakes lock.
This kind of system is going to need brakes anyways for when the car is stopped for long periods at a floor, most likely a set of rails running along either side of the car with clamps on the car that are electromagnetically held open. If the power fails the brakes simply see that as a command to fully engage. A similar system exists in current cable elevators, if the cable is cut for some reason the sudden lack of tension on the mechanism at the top of the car causes it to deploy its on car braking system.
I'd be more interested to see what happens when the Elevator gets hacked
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
There had better be chocolate at some of the stops or Mr. Wonka will come down hard with his prior art.
Why is Snark Required?
The biggest benefit would be that you could have a separate up and down track: with all of the cars always travelling in the same direction, you can fit a lot more of them in a circuit. In the space of three conventional elevators (one up track, one down track, and one waiting space between them) you could potentially have three cars per floor (in practice, congestion would make the optimal number a lot less than this).
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No, not really. The ones with cables have a counterweight, so they tend to stay put, unless the cable snaps - that's when you need emergency brakes. The hydraulic ones will descend if there is a leak or power fail, but still at a relatively safe pace.
A lift engineer told me that the counterweight is usually set for somewhere near half the maximum load to minimise energy use, so if all power and the brakes fail you will go up if you are alone in the lift or down if you are in a fully loaded lift. He said that modern lifts are built so that if this does occur it is survivable without injury by having a either buffer or fixed slides at the bottom of the shaft, and having either the same at the top or enough "jump space" for the lift car to continue once the counterweight hits the bottom until gravity makes it fall back against the cables. I imagine that must be scary.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is shielding, for those with Pacemakers this would be a no-go. I wasn't allowed anywhere near the magnetic catapult testing at Lakehurst :(
Was not even mentioned in the summary. You can run multiple cabins in the same shaft, saving precious floor space (and move the cabins horizontally if they need to pass each other, or you can just assign up and down shafts). Thus, for larger buildings this type of elevator can actually be a major cost saver.
Also, if you have permanent magnets on the track, you could make an eddy current brake just by moving a big piece of metal in close proximity. This piece of metal could be spring loaded to automatically return to the braking position when power goes out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Exactly. In the simplest version of this, the brakes can be spring loaded such that power is required to keep them off the track. If the power cuts, the springs force the brakes into the rail and halts the elevator.
Air brake systems on large trucks work this way, except instead of electricity keeping the emergency ("spring") brake disengaged, its compressed air. If there's ever a catastrophic loss of air pressure (drops below about 30 psi), the spring brake pops on and locks the wheels.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
It depends on the type of maglev technology used. The Japanese trains have wheels that come down when they stop, but in an emergency where there is sudden power loss they wouldn't just drop down instantly anyway. Other types use permanent magnets which provide levitation even when not moving, and only use electrical current to move.
In any case, I can't see a problem adding brakes to a maglev lift. It just needs suitable guide rails.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Willy Wonka is suing.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
This is a "Turbolift" and that's what it needs to be called. It's not a Great Glass Elevator at all and I don't know why anyone would get that impression. Nobody said anything about it flying up out of the building and soaring away on its own.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
This is a system involving magnets and conductors, so when the power goes out and the car begins to drop, it could be made to induce a current which generates a force that resists its movement. This is Lenz's law. Maybe they have figured out a way to use Lenz's Law, in this scenario, allowing the elevator car gently come to rest at the bottom in the event of a power loss.
Not unnaturally, many elevators imbued with intelligence and precognition became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up and down, up and down, experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways, as a sort of existential protest, demanded participation in the decision-making process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking.
If you look at the actual product, it doesn't move freely in space, it is on a track. There is a rotating section of track like a railroad turntable that allows it to switch tracks.
That is where all of the hyperbole about "any direction, even diagonally" comes from. The thing moves on a track. Having the ability to switch tracks means you can have multiple cars in each elevator shaft, and cars can potentially pass one another.
Since they are installing one of these things in an actual commercial building under construction in Germany, I'm sure they have an emergency braking system.
Looking at the track, it doesn't appear as if it is a "contactless" maglev system. It looks like it is running on some sort of track and using a linear electric motor for propulsion. This means that they could simply use an inertial braking system like regular elevators - if the car goes too fast, braking weights fly out and stop the car.
Far as I know, the Japanese commuter bullet train has wheels. They had an experimental high speed maglev on a separate test track but it's not in commercial service.
I am kinda curious why they thought the engineers had overlooked safety. It's kinda silly to think they hadn't actually, you know, thought about gravity. Kids today...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Still runs on Rails so I imagine the rails have safety built in the advantage is that the car can be moved sideways so that another car can pass in the same shaft so multiple cars can use fewer shafts. It certainly isn't a wonkavator at best maybe a Turbolift . Yes I read the article and watched the video sosume
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
The video in the source makes it pretty clear it is running on rails and just using the induction motor to move it. No magnetic levitation involved. For one thing if there was, it'd push the thing away from the track, which isn't a useful direction for an elevator.
It seems like a vertical, cog-based railway system should be able to do the same thing so I'm not sure the advantage of the induction motor here.
The maglev part is kind of a misnomer. It's not using magnetic levitation, per se, but rather using linear motors to move around. Yes, maglev trains use that technology to travel, but so do a number of launched roller coasters out there. Any it's being used as a replacement for the steam catapult in the latest U.S. aircraft carrier.
The elevator car is still in contact with a track, for mechanical and electrical reasons. It almost certainly has track brakes that require energy to release. That is, in the event of power loss, they are spring-loaded to engage automatically.
Additionally, since we are talking about a motor, you can do dynamic braking: short the stator windings together, and the back-emf created by the passing magnets will create a substantial drag force. Want to try at home? Drop a neodymium magnet down a copper pipe and see how long it takes. Or take an ordinary DC motor, short the leads together, then try to backdrive it.
Because of the shoddy writing in the article and the summary, I can understand why you would think it's contactless. But it isn't. The similarity with maglev trains and the hyperloop is the fact that it uses a linear motor to move along the track. The elevator car is still affixed to a track/rail and does not levitate. When it needs to go sideways, it does so at specially located switchpoints where it traverses a horizontal track. This would be obvious from reading the articles or, for the short-attention-spanned, watching the embedded videos.
I have been in reserve-your-floor elevators and 2-cars-per-shaft elevators. I am not looking forward to the Wonkavator, unless they make it extremely human-friendly. It sounds cool but...
The reserve-your-floor elevator would require floor selection by a keypad exterior to the cabin. It would refuse to accept other floor number entry from within the cabin, which is disconcerting if you just jump into a waiting cabin without entering a selection first. These were universally hated. The idea is the elevator is smarter than you and maximizes traffic but really it just was aggravating to anyone not used to it. (Customers and new employees)
The 2-cars-per-shaft elevator would stop and everyone would look uncomfortably at each other in a progressively claustrophobic space. Also your ears would tend to pop from the height.
I would feel a little better about 3D elevators if they would be guaranteed never to stop except in front of a door, and could be exited at any time if someone feels sick. If you tried to exit in an emergency would you be stuck in the middle of high voltage / EMF / mega-robot gears? The image of the exchanger gear is near from an engineering perspective in the way a funicular or trolley gear is, but you don't want to be climbing over one of those things. (maybe subject of a future James Bond movie?) If hacked you could literally lose people somewhere in a building. It brings so many potential neuroses I am not sure people will want to ride them. On the other hand for a factory they would be very cool.
Witnessing the birth of the turbolift, a-la Star Trek. To those saying "watch it fall"... uhm... no.. for exactly as there are brakes that engage in the loss of power in a Star Trek turbolift... same thing here. All it takes is to have a solenoid set that, when power is NOT applied, clamps down. This can also be used to stabilise the lift when it is stopped at a door. These guys are probably just the first to make the turbolift concept work.
U.S. Navy has had contractors developing magnetic lifts for over 10 years: http://news.northropgrumman.co... (2005).
The thing I'd be worried about here is the brakes failing due to weight restrictions being ignored
Elevator brakes are way over engineered. They can handle way more weight than could possibly be crammed into the cab. Brakes can be designed so they require power to retract, so automatically engage in a power-failure. Elevator brakes are also designed to automatically trip if speed thresholds are exceeded, and the tripping mechanism is purely mechanical, requiring no power.
Quibble about TFS: The Japanese Shinkansen are not maglev. They run on wheels.
Or short-circuit the motor windings on an electric bike. You'll be able to push it (with some effort) but unable to get enough speed to ride it. Not even downhill.
They are experimenting with two adjacent shafts, one up and the other down. Cars move horizontally to transfer from on shaft to another at the top floor and the basement.
They are also moving the floor request button outside the car. Thus if three cars are going up, there is one request for floor A from floor B, only one car will stop at B and then at A. A very adaptable system, sort the passengers by destination before they enter a car, this alone doubles the capacity of elevators in large buildings.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Yah, you can either just short out the end turns on a three phase linear synchronous motor and get drag proportional to speed or you can have a secondary set of magnets dragging past aluminium fins, or likely both. Both surprisingly effective braking methods, and not magic.
to try at home, get a NeFeB magnet, a half inch aluminum plate, and try to move one past the other.
Battery packs and recharging when stationary. Or you could use that powerful maglev field for some inductive charging.
ThyssenKrupp is the third largest elevator company on the planet. In the United States alone, they have over 30% market share and built the elevators for top landmarks including One World Trade Center and the Saint Louis Arch (they even have the Arch on their logo). The way the article is written, it sounds like a start-up, not one of the global elevator leaders. It's an important distinction as it adds a lot of credibility to the technology and the claims.
Safety considerations aside - with a normal lift the motor only has to work against cabin weight - counter weight. Even hydraulic lifts can build up pressure when the cabin is descdneing. WIth this design the linear motor has to do all the work lifting the cabin up so unless there's some sort of regenerative braking system when it comes down this is going to be horribly power hungry and inefficient just when buildings are being required to reduce their power usage.
Please call it a Turbolift!
The other is the track break, which engages in the event where the rope snaps (clamps on the cabin that seize the metal tracks that guide the cabin).
Both would be difficult to put in place on a Maglev system.
I was thinking about this type while reading the article. I think it can be done quite simply. Just make the car two parts. The inner part holds the passengers, and the outer part (carrier) has the maglev equipment. Basically, the carrier takes the place of the cable. In the event of a maglev failure, the force between the two components will be zero, and the clamps would activate.
My question is, what happens when the car stops at a floor. Is it held in place mechanically? Is a magnetic field holding it in place?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
So long as there are backup failsafe safety systems in place comparable or better than conventional elevators, sounds good to me. Also, please make the control system as unhackable as possible, and make the at least some of the safety systems completely separate from the main control system, so if it is hacked, they can't use the elevators as murder weapons/weapons of mass destruction? Thanks.
Having a continuous-loop system, while it would allow you to put more cars in the loop, is vulnerable to a single-point-of-failure attack; jamming one car's door open piles up every car in the loop behind that one; doing that with a conventional elevator bank disables only that one elevator. To a lesser degree, this could happen under normal use simply by having people being slow getting on and off, or by having someone hold the 'door open' button to allow someone to keep the elevator on a floor to allow someone to catch that car. The problem could be reduced by having each loop feeding two or more loading stations per floor, but that adds more complexity to the system.
Having a continuous-loop system, while it would allow you to put more cars in the loop, is vulnerable to a single-point-of-failure attack; jamming one car's door open piles up every car in the loop behind that one; doing that with a conventional elevator bank disables only that one elevator.
This is an improvement over paternoster lifts: the cars aren't tied together and, since they can move in more than one direction, it's possible to have places where they can move to one side to pass each other as you see on single lane country roads.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
"Bridge!"
I assume these will be voice controlled, after all.
Certainly you would also have redundant paths on any building tall enough to warrant using this system. For example, three up, three down, and something like 24 lifts in operation on those six shafts at peak times.
Maybe even overtaking paths, if the path-changing mechanism is fast and smooth. It would enable a building to offer a 'rapid elevator' function without needing a dedicated lift shaft.
Basically, it's a vertical passenger transportation highway, which is what these buildings have needed for a long time. I wouldn't be surprised if the lift scheduling and routing algorithms share a lot in common with modern railway signalling systems.
https://youtu.be/EHjTspVeLUI
"There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and
Now they just need an advanced AI that can see a few seconds into the future so they can arrive right before a passenger needs them.
Then they can go sulk in the basement.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
no - the's a little bell that rings just before impact at the bottom of the shaft, just jump in the air when you hear it, or step out of the elevator.
Nullius in verba
doesn't a paternoster already do that ?
Nullius in verba
Major Conglomerate?
Admiral Appliance?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
They salvaged in-house tech for this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So probably it will rest on rails and be moved / levitated by linear motors. Since ThyssenKrupp has longstanding experience with elevator system they should be able to design one with security in mind.
I'm sorry, what do YOU call a 95-story linear accelerator?
Sounds like a bloody giant goddamn space gun in disguise to me.
Probably could do double duty in some sort of civil defense program to drive off any aliens that attempt to molest the Earth.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
What applies the arresting breaks in the vertical motion? One of the major safety features of modern elevators was invented way back in the 1800's. When the tension of the cable is removed, breaks are automatically engaged to keep the elevator from moving. Without a physical cable this needs to be electronic and will be prone to failure along with the same electronics that controls the magnets lift. No lift, no breaks? Or is there a power and controller redundancy built into its emergency system?
Otherwise known as the Ray Rice-a-vator.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
The maglev uses tracks, so I fail to see how a track brake system would be difficult.
Learn to love Alaska
Just to be clear, the Vancouver Skytrain always runs on wheels. It's not a maglev; it's standard light rail with a linear induction motor between the rails.
Skytrain uses the LIM to accelerate and decelerate. It has no motors on its axles.
Standard friction brakes are used for the last few feet of braking when entering stations, and also during emergency stops.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's on a track. You clamp the track, same as all the other elevators out there.
Learn to love Alaska
You quite sure about that? :-)
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Sounds a lot like Star Trek turbo lifts. Anyway, as this company developed the German maglev train which was sold only once, they found one way to make a product out if it. As long as people build ridiculous tall houses such elevator might be a good idea.