A context-aware elevator scheduling system for smart apartment buildings

Abstract

Ubiquitous computing technologies are becoming increasingly a part of our daily lives. For example, in the ubiquitous home environments, plenty of context information can be obtained from various home sensors, and this information can be exploited for smart home activities. This paper presents a new elevator scheduling system for smart apartment buildings that exploits the ubiquitous sensor technologies. In the proposed elevator scheduling system, floor sensors are located at each floor of the apartment building and detect the candidate elevator passengers' behavior before they come to the elevator door and push the elevator call button. The detected information is then delivered to the elevator scheduling system through the building network and the elevator scheduling system utilizes this information in the efficient control of the elevator. Through extensive simulations with various passengers' traffic conditions, we show that the proposed system performs better than the conventional elevator scheduling system in terms of the passengers' average waiting time, the maximum waiting time, and the energy consumption of the elevator significantly. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.