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.

A combination of analytics and sensor technologies identify any deviations from what would be considered a normal ride, from a slight temperature change in the shafts to a slow-closing door. When such anomalies are detected, the system sends alerts to hand-held devices carried by maintenance personnel. The setup helps Schindler analyze problems faster, said Chief Technology Officer Karl-Heinz Bauer. "We can do the jobs in a shorter period of time and with higher quality," he said. The transformation of elevators from just a mechanically efficient way to go up and down into data-spewing devices is helping Schindler, as well as rivals Otis Elevator Co. and Thyssenkrupp AG, predict and diagnose elevator problems and better attune rides with expected foot traffic.

Who will deliver our packages in the future -- drones, or self-driving robots? Amazon has an entire division devoted to developing drones that can carry them over the air to our doorsteps, but it also recently filed a patent on a ground-based, driverless-delivery vehicle. In so doing it joins a handful of startups and companies who are working on similarly small, self driving robots that will carry goods via the sidewalk. They're much slower than drones and they get in the way of pedestrians, but developers at thyssenkrupp Elevator think the wheeled couriers will catch on quicker than drones. Torsten Scholl, who invented the TeleRetail robot with thyssenkrupp and displayed it at the Washington Auto Show last week, says he recently took the gadget to a small village in the Swiss mountains, hoping to film it in action with a drone. Soon after he sent the drones up in the air, passers-by in the village approached him to complain, saying they "didn't want drones around here," and that the devices weren't allowed.

Microsoft Azure Machine Learning is a great example of predictive maintenance. ThyssenKrupp, the elevator manufacturer, gathers data from its elevator sensors and systems, and feeds that data to Azure. The system analyzes the data and provides ThyssenKrupp with insight into elevator operations and maintenance. This helps the company guarantee a higher uptime percentage on its elevators – by determining when a repair is needed before the elevator stops working. In turn, the company has increased its elevator uptime, and it has a more efficient (and reliable) product than its competitors.