Elevator – industrial lift truck – or stationary lift for vehicle – Having computer control of elevator
Reexamination Certificate
2001-10-31
2002-10-29
Salata, Jonathan (Department: 2837)
Elevator, industrial lift truck, or stationary lift for vehicle
Having computer control of elevator
C187S382000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06471011
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention pertains to operation management of a plurality of elevators installed inside a building, and particularly a communications control system and communications control method for elevators, shortening both the time that an elevator passenger waits to board an elevator and the time of waiting until arrival at a desired destination floor, and resistant to failure.
BACKGROUND ART
Explanation is made of a conventional communications control system for elevators, making reference to the drawings.
FIG. 16
is a diagram showing a construction of the conventional communications control system for elevators shown in Japanese Patent Laid-Open 6-080322, for example.
In this conventional communications control system for elevators, as shown in
FIG. 16
, three sets of control units
91
,
92
and
93
for controlling three elevators are provided as an example.
Each control unit
91
,
92
and
93
has car control units CCa, CCb and CCc for controlling its own elevator, and additionally, each control unit
91
,
92
and
93
is integrally provided with group management control processing group control units GCa, GCb and GCc, being made compact for distributed processing, and hall call control processing hall control units HCa, HCb and HCc.
Each control unit
91
,
92
and
93
also has a transmission LSI (Large Scale Integrated circuit)Sa, Sb, and Sc, respectively, and information outputted from here is transmitted via a bus-form high-speed transmission line
94
.
On the hall side, in correspondence to the 2-series construction of the present example, there is provided for each series of each hall, a hall controller
95
comprising a one-chip microcomputer (one-chip micon). Each hall controller
95
is expressed by a reference numeral S followed by a numeral (
1
or
2
) which indicates a series type and a numeral (
1
−m) which indicates a hall type. For example, the hall controller
95
on the series
1
side at floor m is specified as Slm.
These hall controllers
95
perform input processing of a hall call registration signal from a hall call registration button
96
and output processing of a lighting signal for a hall call registration lamp
97
. Further, these hall controllers
95
are connected per series and in a parallel fashion to master nodes CPU Ma, Mb and Mc of each control unit
91
,
92
, and
93
via transmission lines
98
,
99
.
One from among the plurality of control units
91
-
93
is made to be a main node for performing processing of dividing up work among each elevator and achieving synchronization among the control units therein, and the other control units are made to be subnodes for obeying the main unit. For control functions requiring real time processing, synchronized control processing of the control units of all the series is performed from the main unit. For control functions requiring cyclic processing, the control processing is processed by dividing them among the control units of each series.
The conventional communications control system for elevators described above had a problem that synchronization commands of the cyclic processing caused a useless processing burden on sub-nodes that were clearly not 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-node side detected collisions of transmissions and staggered transmission times, when there were ten-plus sub units, the sub side presumed that answer collisions would occur, 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 communications control system for elevators described above, there was a problem that while a given network is waiting for a given cyclic process to be performed, that network has no data to communicate and is in an idle state.
Further, in the case of the communications control system for elevators described above, when the control unit that is made to be the main node is down for a given period of time, resuming of communications is achieved by a method such that the first control unit, from among the remaining control units to achieve control of the transmission line, is made to be the new master, and communications are resumed. This seems reasonable at first glance; however, the sending out of data in order to become the main node becomes more complicated the more sub-nodes there are, and data collisions on the network are expected due to a plurality of such data communication taking place simultaneously. It is difficult to be sure that correct data communication/receiving will be performed at all the nodes, and moreover, there is a possibility that a single main node might not be present or two or more nodes might become main nodes simultaneously and send out synchronization commands separately. When time was apportioned for restoring failures, there was a possibility that serious trouble may be caused in the operation of an elevator, which handles human life.
The present invention was developed to solve the above-mention problems. Therefore, an objective of the present invention is to obtain a communications control system for elevators and communications control method in which the synchronization commands do not cause data receiving burdens on all the nodes; the possibility of collisions at the nodes upon sending out data is made as minimal as possible; the network is not idling but is capable of working even during data processing at each node; and even in the case when the main node is down due to some cause, a new main node resumes data communication/receiving within extremely short period of time; and, as a result, the operation management of the Plurality of elevators installed inside the building can be conducted in such a way that both the time that an elevator passenger waits to board an elevator and the time of waiting until arrival at a desired destination floor may be reduced, and, further, the communications central system is resistant to failure.
DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION
A communications control system for elevators according to the present invention has a plurality of control units including at least respective car control units and elevator hall registration control units, each of the plurality of control units having a node, the plurality of nodes being connected to each other via a network, and each of the node having a management table establishing correspondence between a node number and a network address, wherein the communications control system for elevators comprises a node that acts as a master when, in a case where a first network address corresponding to the node number of this node is, upon referring to the management table, a specific address in the management table, this node sends to all other nodes a broadcast communication to notify that this node is a temporary master having the, first network address added thereto and receives from another temporary master a broadcast communication stating that this other node is the temporary master having a second network address corresponding to the node number of this other temporary master added thereto, if the fist network address and the second network address conform to specific conditions; and a node that acts as a slave when, in a case where the network address corresponding to the node number of this node is not a specific address in the management table or the first network address corresponding to the node number of this node is a specific address in the management table upon referring to the management table, this node sends to all other nodes a broadcast communication to notify that this node is a temporary master having the first network address added thereto and receives from another temporary master a broadcast communication stating that this other node is the temporary master having a se
Ando Hiroshi
Gokan Hiroshi
Koura Kunikazu
Takeuchi Nobukazu
Tatsumi Shougo
Leydig , Voit & Mayer, Ltd.
Mitsubishi Denki & Kabushiki Kaisha
Salata Jonathan
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