This study presents a proof of concept for a contactless elevator operation system aimed at minimizing human intervention while enhancing safety, intelligence, and efficiency. A microcontroller-based edge device executing tiny Machine Learning (tinyML) inferences is developed for elevator operation. Using person detection and keyword spotting algorithms, the system offers cost-effective and robust units requiring minimal infrastructural changes. The design incorporates preprocessing steps and quantized convolutional neural networks in a multitenant framework to optimize accuracy and response time. Results show a person detection accuracy of 83.34% and keyword spotting efficacy of 80.5%, with an overall latency under 5 seconds, indicating effectiveness in real-world scenarios. Unlike current high-cost and inconsistent contactless technologies, this system leverages tinyML to provide a cost-effective, reliable, and scalable solution, enhancing user safety and operational efficiency without significant infrastructural changes. The study highlights promising results, though further exploration is needed for scalability and integration with existing systems. The demonstrated energy efficiency, simplicity, and safety benefits suggest that tinyML adoption could revolutionize elevator systems, serving as a model for future technological advancements. This technology could significantly impact public health and convenience in multi-floor buildings by reducing physical contact and improving operational efficiency, particularly relevant in the context of pandemics or hygiene concerns.

Elevators and lifts have been in use for a long time now. After years of advancements and evolutions, today's elevators and lifts are extremely modernized and innovative. Elevator cars, freight elevators, and passenger elevators can be commonly seen in almost every commercial building. The use of lifts and elevators has greatly increased in the past few years. They reduce the time of travel and make movement effortless. The lift designs are lavish and functional.

Testing new, innovative technologies is a crucial task for safety and acceptance. But how can new systems be tested if no historical real-world data exist? Simulation provides an answer to this important question. Classical simulation tools such as event-based simulation are well accepted. But most of these established simulation models require the specification of many parameters. Furthermore, simulation runs, e.g., CFD simulations, are very time consuming. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are powerful tools for generating new data for a variety of tasks. Currently, their most frequent application domain is image generation. This article investigates the applicability of GANs for imitating simulations. We are comparing the simulation output of a technical system with the output of a GAN. To exemplify this approach, a well-known multi-car elevator system simulator was chosen. Our study demonstrates the feasibility of this approach. It also discusses pitfalls and technical problems that occurred during the implementation. Although we were able to show that in principle, GANs can be used as substitutes for expensive simulation runs, we also show that they cannot be used "out of the box". Fine tuning is needed. We present a proof-of-concept, which can serve as a starting point for further research.

We propose a novel approach for group elevator scheduling by formulating it as the maximization of submodular function under a matroid constraint. In particular, we propose to model the total waiting time of passengers using a quadratic Boolean function. The unary and pairwise terms in the function denote the waiting time for single and pairwise allocation of passengers to elevators, respectively. We show that this objective function is submodular. The matroid constraints ensure that every passenger is allocated to exactly one elevator. We use a greedy algorithm to maximize the submodular objective function, and derive provable guarantees on the optimality of the solution. We tested our algorithm using Elevate 8, a commercial-grade elevator simulator that allows simulation with a wide range of elevator settings. We achieve significant improvement over the existing algorithms.

Not widely known by the AI community, elevator control has become a major field of application for AI technologies. Techniques such as neural networks, genetic algorithms, fuzzy rules and, recently, multiagent systems and AI planning have been adopted by leading elevator companies not only to improve the transportation capacity of conventional elevator systems but also to revolutionize the way in which elevators interact with and serve passengers. In this article, we begin with an overview of AI techniques adopted by this industry and explain the motivations behind the continuous interest in AI. We review and summarize publications that are not easily accessible from the common AI sources. In the second part, we present in more detail a recent development project to apply AI planning and multiagent systems to elevator control problems.

This paper describes the application of reinforcement learning (RL) to the difficult real world problem of elevator dispatching. The elevator domain poses a combination of challenges not seen in most RL research to date. Elevator systems operate in continuous state spaces and in continuous time as discrete event dynamic systems. Their states are not fully observable and they are nonstationary due to changing passenger arrival rates. In addition, we use a team of RL agents, each of which is responsible for controlling one elevator car.

This paper describes the application of reinforcement learning (RL) to the difficult real world problem of elevator dispatching. The elevator domain poses a combination of challenges not seen in most RL research to date. Elevator systems operate in continuous state spaces and in continuous time as discrete event dynamic systems. Their states are not fully observable and they are nonstationary due to changing passenger arrival rates. In addition, we use a team of RL agents, each of which is responsible for controlling one elevator car.

This paper describes the application of reinforcement learning (RL) to the difficult real world problem of elevator dispatching. The elevator domainposes a combination of challenges not seen in most RL research to date. Elevator systems operate in continuous state spaces and in continuous time as discrete event dynamic systems. Their states are not fully observable and they are nonstationary due to changing passenger arrival rates. In addition, we use a team of RL agents, each of which is responsible for controlling one elevator car.The team receives a global reinforcement signal which appears noisy to each agent due to the effects of the actions of the other agents, the random nature of the arrivals and the incomplete observation of the state.