Elevator – industrial lift truck – or stationary lift for vehicle – Having computer control of elevator
Reexamination Certificate
2001-08-16
2002-09-17
Salata, Jonathan (Department: 2837)
Elevator, industrial lift truck, or stationary lift for vehicle
Having computer control of elevator
C187S382000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06450298
ABSTRACT:
This application is based on Application No. 2001-134061, filed in Japan on May 1, 2001, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to operation management of a plurality of elevators installed inside a building, and a communications control system for elevators capable of decreasing both waiting time that an elevator passenger waits to board an elevator and waiting time that the elevator passenger waits to arrive at a desired target floor, and also is resistant to failure.
2. Description of the Related Art
Explanation is made of a conventional communications control system for elevators, making reference to the drawings.
FIG. 21
is a diagram showing a construction of a conventional communications control system for elevators shown in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. Hei 6-80322.
In this conventional communications control system for elevators, as shown in
FIG. 21
, three control units
91
,
92
and
93
for controlling three elevators are provided as an example.
Each control unit
91
,
92
and
93
has a car control unit CCa, CCb and CCc each controlling its own elevator, and in addition to this, each control unit
91
,
92
and
93
is integrally equipped with a group control unit GCa, GCb and GCc for group management control processing being made compact for distributed processing, and a hall control unit HCa, HCb and HCc for hall call control processing.
Each control unit
91
,
92
and
93
additionally has an LSI (large-scale integrated circuit) Sa, Sb and Sc for transmitting, and information output from these is transmitted via a bus-form high speed transmission line
94
.
On the hall side, corresponding to the way this example is configured into two series, a hall controller
95
comprising a one-chip microcomputer (one-chip micon) is provided for each series of each hall. Each hall controller
95
is expressed by both a number (1 or 2) following the symbol S for indicating the series type and a number (1-m) for indicating the hall type. For example, the hall controller
95
on series 1 side at floor m is specified as S
1
m.
These hall controllers
95
perform, for example, input processing of a hall call registration signal from a hall call registration button
96
and output processing of a lighting signal to a hall call registration lamp
97
. Further, these hall controllers
95
are connected in a parallel fashion to a master node CPU Ma, Mb and Mc of each control unit
91
,
92
and
93
via a transmission line
98
,
99
in each series.
Any one of the plurality of control units
91
-
93
is set as a main unit for dividing up work among the elevators and establishing synchronization among each control unit. The other control units are configured as sub units obeying the above-mentioned main unit. Control functions requiring real time processing are processed by the main unit performing control processing on the control units of all the series in a synchronized fashion. Control functions requiring cyclic processing are processed by dividing them up among the control units of each series.
The conventional communications control system for elevators described above had a problem in that synchronization instructions for the cyclic processing caused a useless burden for the sub units that was not clearly related to the given communication.
Further, in the case of the conventional communications control system for elevators described above, there was a problem that when a method was used such that the sub unit side detected collisions of transmissions and staggered transmission times, when there were ten-plus sub units or more, answer collisions were expected, and in order to receive all answers, the waiting times of the main unit became widely varied. Transmission of large amounts of faulty data generated with the answer collisions caused the network to be weighed down with useless traffic.
Further, in the case of the conventional communications control system for elevators mentioned above, it is considered that network break up and failure cause data collisions on the network. Thus, there was a problem in that it was difficult to transmit and receive data correctly at all units, and furthermore, there was a possibility that network break up may cause all the main units to disappear. When time was taken up for restoring failures caused by such erroneous processing, there was a possibility that serious trouble may be caused in the operation of the elevator which handles human life.
Further, in the case of the conventional communications control system for elevators mentioned above, it is considered that when network connection failure causes two or more networks to collide, the simultaneous operation of two or more main units may create a data collision on the network. Thus, there was a problem that it was difficult to simultaneously transmit synchronization instructions separately and transmit and receive data correctly at all units. Furthermore, there was a possibility that the collision may cause all the main units to disappear. When time is taken up for restoring failures caused by such erroneous processing, there was a possibility that serious trouble may be caused in the operation of the elevator which handles human life.
Next, explanation is made of a master conflict control method according to a conventional communications control device, making reference to the drawings.
FIG. 22
shows a construction of a communications control system shown in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. Hei 9-149061. The communications control device shown in
FIG. 22
provides a conflict method for performing a unique control in the case when a plurality of masters mistakenly exist on the same transmission channel. In order to enable transition to a master in response to instructions from a superior calculator, each control station
82
has a master function
83
.
Control stations
82
having become masters issue master notifications at predetermined periods containing their respective priority levels, and simultaneously transmit them. However, in the case when a control station
82
that has received a master notification is also in master status itself, the priority level of the master notification and the priority level of this control station
82
are compared, and in the case when this control station
82
has a lower priority it becomes a slave.
However, in the case of the conventional communications control device mentioned above, a node behaving as a master sends synchronization start data to one slave among a plurality of slaves, receives synchronization completion data from the slave, and then sends subsequent synchronization start data to a subsequent slave in order. However, there was a problem that when synchronization start data and synchronization completion data are transmitted and received to and from the slaves in this way, the synchronization start data and the synchronization completion data occupy a large proportion of the data relative to the elevator operation that is originally supposed to be transmitted and received. Thus, the network load on both the masters and the slaves increased.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention was developed to solve the above-mentioned problems. Therefore, an object of the present invention is to obtain a communications control device for elevators in which synchronization instructions do not create a load on data reception in all the units and which is capable of realizing smooth data transfer.
In order to attain the above object, according to an aspect of the present invention, a communications control system for elevators having a plurality of control units including respective car control units and elevator hall registration control units, each of said plurality of control units having a node, the plurality of nodes being connected to each other via a network, and each of said node having a management table establishing correspondence between a node number and a network address, said elevator communi
Gokan Hiroshi
Koura Kunikazu
Tanaka Junya
Yamaguchi Keita
Leydig , Voit & Mayer, Ltd.
Mitsubishi Denki & Kabushiki Kaisha
Salata Jonathan
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