THE HIDDEN SCIENCE OF ELEVATORS

YOU WALK TO the lift, you hit the ‘Up’ button, and you wait. And wait. And… wait.

There really is a good reason the lift keeps rising away from you. And it isn’t karmic payback for not returning your neighbour’s pruning shears.

With every press of a button, we’ve given our lifts a doozy of a computational challenge. The elevator system needs to decide which car to send for you, and when. It must choose whether to shoot up from the fifth floor to collect those people on the seventh before coming down to the foyer to answer your call. It must consider who’s been waiting longer, and which of the many paths is the most efficient and least painful for everybody. Elevator traffic is an elaborate, delicate dance, and once you see the steps, you can’t help but tip your hat to the engineers