Escalator Efficiency Control

Engineering Design VI – HW7

Group:

James Ray

Andrew Hyduchak

Michael Murphy

Leo Dormann

Andrew Kleinman

Note: The only real change in designs comes in the type of sensor. The functional aspect of the device remains the same throughout either design. The two designs that were decided upon would be a pressure sensor design or a diode sensor design. Figure 1 and Figure 2 indicate the functional aspects of the designs with some description.

Pressure Sensor(Figure 3):

The red rectangle under the approach pad is the scale. The scale will determine by weight, approximately how many people are approaching at a given time. The scale sends the weight in the form of a signal to the control. The addition to the program within the control is that there will be an algorithm that will divide the weight signal by a certain number which will indicate the amount of people approaching. Like the previous design, the control and mechanical portion are indicated by yellow and brown boxes, and use ac and dc current respectively. The plus with this design is that it is very simplistic and would require a low level of effort to implement.

Diode Sensor (Figure 4)

The final option is the diode detector option. Like the other method, there is still an approach pad which is indicated by the red box. In this case, the pad is more just an area at which the diodes are concentrated. This is similar to what a home security system. A beam of light or laser is emitted from one diode and received by the other diode. When this beam is broken, a signal is sent to the control which again is indicated by the yellow box. It is then manipulated by the controller and sent to the mechanical portion which is indicated by the brown box. The diodes are indicated by the small grey triangles near the approach pad. The advantage with this comes that there is very little wear and tear on the device.

Comparison

The favorable of the two designs would be the diode sensor. Even though the pressure sensor is simplistic in design and requires a low level of power input, there is more direct wear and tear on the device itself as opposed to the diode design. This results in longer downtime to do maintenance and more money to replace parts. With the diode design, the only downtime and money is gone into replacing the bulb on the laser. This is more efficient in the long run and thus the better choice.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Yes

YesYes

Figure 3

Figure 4

Constraints

Economic

The economic constraints on this device would be to set a value to the amount of monetary savings that a mall will receive by using the product. Once the device is implemented, there is little monetary income to the manufacturer. A proper base price and yearly license fee’s should be implemented. The base fee would at least cover the cost of manufacturing of the products. The real profit will come in the license and customization fees. This follows the idea of giving away razors and selling the blades to the customers.The funding for the production of the products will come from the companies from which the parts come. The microprocessors and sensors come from outside companies.

Environmental

There are little environmental constraints on this product due to the fact that it is an indoor device. The device simply builds on the existing hardware. There are no true environmental regulations that affect this product.

Health and Safety

As for health and safety, there are many constraints. If the escalator stops while a person is on it, a person may lose balance and injure themselves. The code must be refined in order to insure proper functioning of the escalator. Escalators are relatively safe but can be quite dangerous if they malfunction. The device will not affect the integrity of the existing device.

Manufacturability

This will be rather simple to manufacture. All of the components are already in existence. The only real manufacturing would be to encase the components, connect them, and write code for the microcontroller. As for a facility, due to the lack of heavy machinery needed, the factory does not need to be incredibly large. The space comes from the machine that is needed to produce the plastic molding that holds the device. In addition to this, offices and testing rooms are needed. The testing room needs to simply hold a few computers to simulate the device along with the device itself which is not a great deal bigger than a school desk.

Sustainability

The product needs to have an embedded code that would prevent tampering with the license. In order to ensure profit, there must be a license fee. If the expiration date of license is tampered with, the fee may be avoided. Other than this, the only real constraint is the batteries in the sensors. Since there are no moving parts, the device has a very long life. As long as it saves companies money, it will be continually bought by others.

Responsibilities

The ethical responsibilities would be to set a fair price. The license fee should not exceed the savings per year.

Teamwork and Planning

The design components are very simple for this project. The interaction with the existing device would be handled by the electrical engineer in the group. In this case, it would be Leo Dormann. This is due to the fact that the circuit needs to be broken and fed connected to the additional device. It needs to be determined where this must happen. For the rest of the members, computer engineers are needed. These members will test and compile the programming for the microcontroller. In addition to this, they would assemble the receptors and sensors.

S.W.O.T

Strengths-

Easily Implementable in various locations. Escalator will look virtually the same as before after the modification is completed.
Does not require pathway as in previous designs.
Obeys US safety law requiring constant escalator speed, allowing our design to be implemented all over the globe.
Microchip does not require much space in order to operate, thus will cause no issues in current location of escalator.
Quickly calculates weight of occupants on escalator, can adjust motor power quickly and easily.

Weaknesses-

Requires more expensive motor than regular escalator, due to the frequent change in output power.
Could motor wear out over time? As we know with many machines (example: cars), many machines experience much more wear and tear due to changing motor power than going at a constant speed.
Could sensors wear out over time due to people walking over them continually?
Floor would have to be altered in order for necessary sensors to be installed.

Opportunities-

The ability for the escalator to gain energy from people who walk down escalator. This would cut into power consumption even more and make it much more self-sufficient. This would have to be researched to see if this option is economically feasible/worth it.
The ability for the escalator to be powered by solar power. Solar panels would have to be situated outside the building and be connected to the escalator. Due to the majority of escalators running mostly during the day, we could use solar power in order to save more energy.
An ability to set start/stop times for the escalator so it can shut off automatically when a building opens or closes.

Threats-

A possible threat to the project is not having an escalator to test it on. The escalator would have to be modified in order to even test the effectiveness of the escalator efficiency controller, so due to the senior design budget, we will not have the funds to acquire an escalator for use.

Appendix