Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
Enter the UltraRope, a new kind of lift cable developed by Finnish elevator company Kone. Eschewing woven steel cable in favour of carbon fibre, the UltraRope is described as “lift-hoisting technology” [...]. Strong and lightweight, the UltraRope will supposedly allow lifts to travel up to 1km in a single run, double what’s currently possible with a steel cable. The UltraRope is 90% lighter than the equivalent steel cable, thereby reducing the load and enabling far taller continuous runs. — theguardian.com
Microsoft researchers have enabled elevators in a company building to detect the likelihood that a person walking by will want to board it. The camera in a Microsoft Kinect — positioned in the ceiling — tracked for months the behaviors of people who got on the elevators vs. those who bypassed the elevators on their way to a nearby cafeteria. That data fed an artificial intelligence system, which taught itself to identify the behaviors indicating who wanted to board an elevator and who didn’t. — washingtonpost.com
The Intempo 47-story skyscraper builders forgot to design working elevators above the lower floors. It’s a blunder of astounding proportions for the troubled luxury project with a lovely beach view in Benidorm, Spain.
The problem has existed for some time. However, the scandal exploded into public view late last month in Spanish news source El País when it was revealed that the upper flights of the Intempo building lacked adequate elevator access above 20 stories.
— inquisitr.com
Lootah said the project is a complete glass, transparent structure resembling a huge window frame intended to highlight the attractions of the city so visitors can view the skyscrapers on Shaikh Zayed Road from one side — symbolising modern Dubai — while the other side of the frame will show the old Dubai landmarks of Deira, Umm Hurair and Karama.
“The electrical panoramic elevators will help visitors move through its facilities as if they are moving in the sky inside the glass frame,”
— khaleejtimes.com
As some of you may remember, when the winner of the ThyssenKrupp Elevator Award was announced 3 years ago, there was quite a bit of controversy surrounding the selected winner. The winning entry, "Dubai Frame" by Fernando Donis of the Netherlands, was a 150m tall structure designed as a literal... View full entry
The United Technologies Corp. unit has to go beyond the braking mechanism Elisha Otis demonstrated with a rope and saber at the 1854 World’s Fair. It’s working on systems able to stop 16 metric tons (35,274 pounds) of elevator and cable falling from the top of a kilometer-tall tower -- equal to a half-full tractor trailer driven off a cliff. — bloomberg.com
As a mathematician steeped in the theories of vertical transportation at Otis Elevator Co., Ms. Christy, 55, has spent a quarter-century developing systems that make elevators run as perfectly as possible—which means getting most riders into a car in less than 20 seconds. "Traditionally, the wait time is the most important factor," she says. "The thing people hate the most is waiting." — online.wsj.com
