Destination (button-less) elevators are cool

I rode in my first buttonless elevator recently at the New Orleans Marriot. I have a mild interest in cool elevators and elevator routing, so I thought I’d share some trivia about these destination elevator dispatch systems.

Destination elevators do not have buttons inside the elevator. Instead, they work like this: you request your floor on the outside, and a routing system tells you which elevator to enter.

Since the elevators are less common, they have instructions, as follows:

The idea is that rather than having people crowd into an elevator and then request their floors, the destination elevators do the math before hand, and group people going to the same floors. This leads to fewer stops and time savings.

They are advertised to have up to a 30 percent time savings, according to the manufacturer.

Here is how the manufacterer describes the advantage of its Miconic 10 destination algorithm over conventional elevators:

(see page 7 of this document for full-size image)

If you want to see the elevator in action, you can check out this Youtube video of the Miconic 10.

Video: Schindler Miconic 10 Traction elevators

(I should mention this guy seems overly excited for his first Miconic 10 experience. But then it made sense when I saw his profile which claims “elevator photography since 1993,” which is quite the passion.)