Context-Aware Elevator Scheduling

Research on context-aware systems is usually user- centric and thus focussed on the context of a specific user to serve his or her needs in an optimized way. In this paper, we want to apply core concepts developed in research on context-awareness in a system-centric way, namely to elevator systems. We show with three different examples that the performance of an elevator system can be significantly improved if the elevator control has access to contextual knowledge. The first example demonstrates that an appropriate elevator group scheduling algorithm can be chosen and adjusted to the current and near-future passenger traffic situation. The second example incorporates a second predominant technology used in many ubiquitous computing environments, namely RFID tags, to predict the passengers destination. The third example shows that adaptation to a specific emergency situation can further increase the transportation capacity of an elevator system which is ultimately important to save as many lifes as possible in an emergency. Evidence for the increased efficiency is provided by using a comprehensive simulation of a diverse set of scheduling algorithms and scenarios.