ELEVATORS OF THE FUTURE
IT’S NOT JUST UP AND DOWN anymore for the ubiquitous elevator. Coming soon is the smart elevator that CAN MOVE ANY WHICH WAY — and access THE CLOUD.
Pe op led on’ t tend to notice elevators until something goes wrong. Unless one is slow, out of service or crammed full of people, we get on and off without much thought.
Elevator makers haven’t given it much thought either. Although we can now use a cellphone inside an elevator or see the local weather displayed on a monitor, it still goes up and down a shaft by cables or gears, just as it has for the past 160 years.
More t han 12 million elevators worldwide make seven billion trips to move over one billion people every day, but maintenance makes those elevators useless for 190 million hours each year on average.
But as cities get even more vertical — UNICEF estimates 70 per cent of the global population will live in cities by the end of the century — people need reliable new ways of being moved inside the concrete jungle’s looming towers.
That’s something manufacturers are realizing, ushering in an era of smarter elevators that can move any which way through a building — not unlike Willy Wonka’s famous great glass Wonkavator, minus the breakingthrough-the-ceiling part.
“The fact is urbanization is growing like hell and, as a consequence, the buildings are getting taller and taller,” said Heinrich Hiesinger, chief executive of Germanybased engineering company ThyssenKrupp AG. “But our team could not accept that we have a limitation.”
Elevators will always go up and down, but ThyssenKrupp said it’s time for them to go sideways as well — and that’s just a start. “And if you can do both, you then can go any angle, which for an architect designing a building is striking,” Hiesinger said.
ThyssenKrupp has introduced a rope- free elevator called Multi, first unveiled at a 246- metre test tower in Germany in June. The cabins can go sideways and aren’t limited to one per shaft due to a unique motor technology that makes the elevators more like a looping metro system within the tower.
But it isn’t just the hope of a chocolate factory- inspired elevator utopia that sparks ThyssenKrupp’s innovation, since Multi’s technology seems to have numerous real-world benefits.
Multi elevators have up to 50 per cent higher transport capacity and reduce peak power by as much as 60 per cent, ThyssenKrupp said.
And since Multi requires smaller and fewer shafts, a building’s usable space can be increased by up to 25 per cent, which means more leasable square footage and, therefore, more revenue for the owner.
“The reality is Multi is a significant leap,” said Patrick Bass, chief executive of ThyssenKrupp North America Inc. “There is a lot of pull from the market in the fact that it opens up opportunities that in the past were never conceivable, whether it be in underground connections or how we can design buildings today.”
Other elevator companies
are also upping their game. U. S.-based Otis Elevator Co., a subsidiary of United Tech
nologies Corp., has been experimenting with using mobile technology to monitor and service elevators once they break down, while Switzerland-based Schindler Group has a communication system product to find the best way to route people through a building.
But ThyssenKrupp’s Multi is the world’s first sidewaysmoving elevator, arguably the industry’s most significant technological innovation in years.
ThyssenKrupp is involved with one-third of the 21 tallest buildings under construction in Toronto as of September 2016, with additional support for four super- tall buildings ( between 440 and 520 metres). The company said it had 9,000 elevators in the city and employs half of Toronto’s elevator mechanics.
But while Multi’s technology may be looking ahead at the long game — since it requires being planned into the design of new buildings — there is a more immediate opportunity to modernize existing elevators.
For example, ThyssenKrupp has introduced a technology called Max, which it said will make older and newer models smarter by using cloud-based predictive maintenance.
Data from Max-connected machines — such as door movements, trips, powerups, car calls and error codes — are collected from around the world and sent to the cloud to be analyzed by algorithms and machine learning.
From there, operational patterns are picked up and the various components’ remaining lifetimes are calculated so technicians can replace parts before a breakdown occurs. Elevators can then be scheduled for maintenance during off- peak hours to minimize disruption, increasing efficiency.
The first Canadian Maxpowered elevator launched in June at Toronto Pearson International Airport. But there are more than 50,000 elevators in North America connected to Max and, globally, predictive maintenance has collectively saved ThyssenKrupp 95 million hours per year of operation, according to its data released last year.
“It’s a totally different world now in terms of expectations and I think what ThyssenKrupp is doing is saying, ‘ How do we lead the way to see how markets are changing?’” said Ryan Wilson, chief executive of ThyssenKrupp Elevator Canada.
“If we can get to that predictive nature, then it’s very exciting for the service business.”
For Max’s predictive maint enance, ThyssenKrupp worked with Microsoft
Corp. to use the tech giant’s large internet of things platform powered by Azure, which allows large amounts of data to be stored, monitored in real time and analyzed to identify trends and make predictions.
“You collect data over time from the thing itself — in this case, the elevator — and then any time there is an unexpected failure, you label the data in such a way to indicate ( that),” said Sam George, Microsoft’s director for the Azure internet of things engineering team.
“You’re then able to have machine learning predict what parts of the data indicate a pending failure and then as new data is being sent from live elevators, you can use that machine learning module to automatically score data to predict its maintenance window.”
The ThyssenK ru ppMicrosoft partnership is one of more than 600 for Azure’s internet of things program. George works closely with ThyssenKrupp at Microsoft on Max because of the scope of the project.
“When ThyssenKrupp started with elevators several years ago, many of the services we have now weren’t available,” he said. “We partner with these large customers, watch what they are wrestling with and then invent new technologies that make it very easy for them to benefit from (the internet of things).”
Once it’s time for technicians to visit the elevator to perform the predictive maintenance, Microsoft’s mixed reality glasses — called HoloLens — are used to overlay a digital interface on the real world.
If technicians need help, they can use Skype Assist so another person can watch what they are seeing and even digitally annotate through the glasses so on-site personnel can see what they may have missed. On- site technicians also practise and train on the elevator using HoloLens before a service call.
“If you think about everything ( ThyssenKrupp is) doing for their connected elevators — from predictive maintenance to HoloLens — they have reduced the amount of servicing by a factor of two, and then any time they do have to service them, they have reduced the amount of time they have to spend servicing by a factor of four,” George said. “When you add both of those up, it’s a really significant impact on their business.”
ThyssenKrupp is convinced Multi and Max elevators set the stage for the future, and believes all the collected data, when connected with information from governments, transit authorities, taxi services and ride-sharing companies, will help identify larger city-wide trends about how many people move at what time and where, and help move them more efficiently.
Exchanging data between partners is just “the first step,” said Bass, who hopes the collaboration will lead to new products that change the definition of transportation.
“Go back to the pictures of The Matrix or various different Hollywood films that have portrayed personal or intervalized transportation being able to transgress across cities in multiple directions,” he said.
“I believe that is really technically possible and you’ll see it in our lifetime.”