INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (IRJET) E-ISSN: 2395-0056

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Elevator Control System Using Finite Automata

Isha Ashish Bahendwar1, Ankita Manish Singh2, Prof. S.G. Mundada3
1,2Dept. of Computer Science Engineering, Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management, Nagpur, India
3Assistant Professor, Dept. of Computer Science Engineering, Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and
Management, Nagpur, India
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Abstract: The basic conception behind the given problem application maintains security for elevators and provides
definition is that the functioning of the electronic elevators amenity.
can be controlled and operated by the users through an
android application. Different operations like travelling to In this android application, SQLite database is used
upper floors or lower floors from the current floor of the user to store the uses account information (an in-built database
can be handled by considering the floors as states of finite supported by android). Diverse operations can be
automaton. Every floor in this design will be considered as a performed related to the accounts of the users whenever
final state because any of them can be destination of the the need arises, like,
elevator user. This paper comprises the history of elevators,
their working, the proposed idea of application and its 1. Editing profiles.
functioning. It focuses on the connectivity of the lift and 2. Adding details.
users through mobile phones in a very secured and user-
friendly manner. Only authorized people perform the following operations:

Key Words: Automata, States, Transitions. 1. Adding accounts for new employees
2. Deleting accounts of old employees
1. INTRODUCTION
2. EVOLUTION OF ELEVATOR
An Elevator is a machine which is used by people
for fast and comfortable transport of goods or themselves
from different levels or floors in any multistoried building. Vertical lifts have been used to build the pyramids
Elevators are generally powered by electric motors that in Egypt. Archimedes was the person who invented the
either drive traction cables or counterweight systems like first reference elevator in 312. From some literacy source,
a hoist, or pump hydraulic fluid to raise a cylindrical piston elevators were developed as cable on a hemp rope and
like a jack. powered by hand or by through animals. This type of
All the regular visitors of that building would have elevator was first installed in the Sinai Monastery of Egypt.
their personal accounts with all their details and the In the 17th century, elevators were placed in the building of
default floor the work on or live on. Any stranger would England and France. After that in 1793, Lvan Kuliben
not be allowed to use the lift until and unless he/she has an created an elevator with the screw lifting mechanism for
id and password. New accounts can be created for recently the winter place of Saint Petersburg. After that, in 1816, an
joined employees or uses by the authorized person. In the elevator was established in the main building of Sub-
similar manner, accounts of old employees can be Moscow village called Arkhamgelskoye. Most of them ran
removed. During account creation, the user would be hydraulically. [2][3] The very first hydraulic elevators used
asked for the floor of his/her regular use. Whenever a plunger below the car to raise or lower the elevator. A
someone wants to use the elevator, he/she would be asked used to pump applied water pressure to a plunger, or steel
for password on the application and if valid password is column, inside a vertical cylinder. In the year 1852, Elisha
entered, the application would ask him/her whether he Otis was the person who introduced the safety elevator,
wants to go to his regular floor or some other floor. which prevented the fall of the cab, in case the cable broke.
According to the option he chooses, the lift proceeds In 1857 March 23rd, the first Otis passenger elevator was
further. If it is his/her regular floor, it takes him there. But, installed in New York City. The very first electric elevator
if he goes for the second option, the application would was built by Werner von Siemens in 1880. [8]
offer him the list of input options. He/she can choose the
input options from: J.W. Meaker patented a method which permitted
elevator doors to open and close safely in 1874. In 1882,
1. Manually enter the destination floor number. when hydraulic power was a well-established technology,
2. Through buttons. a company later named the London Hydraulic Power
3. Through arrow keys. Company was formed. In 1929, Clarence Conrad Crispen,
with Inclinator Company of America, created the first
The user can choose its mode of input from the residential elevators. [7]
drawer in the left side of the home page. In this way, this

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3. DESIGN from the drawer i.e., input from keyboard or

buttons.
4. Using any mode of input user can enter his
Before electronic elevators were invented and destination and travel to that floor using this
came into commercial market, ropes were used for the application and logout after reaching.
functioning of the elevators. The elevators are the machine 5. Users can edit its profile and change password
that have platform which are pulled or pushed to change whenever he wants to.
its level with the help of mechanical means. A modern-day
elevator consists of a cab (also called a "Cage" or "Car")
mounted on a platform within an enclosed space called a 4. TECHNOLOGIES USED
shaft or sometimes a "hoist way". Earlier, elevator drive 4.1. Android
mechanisms were powered by steam and water hydraulic
pistons or by hand. Android is a Linux based operating system for
mobile devices such as tablets, televisions and
In this way, in the coming years elevators have smartphones. Android is developed by Andy Rubin in
developed a lot. Much advancement are done in elevators October, 2013 in California, United States of America.
and infact digitally operable elevators have been After that, Google acquired android incorporation in
developed and more and more advancements are being 2005. The main people, who developed android were
done for elevators to become more efficient and user Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Chris White and Nick Sears.
friendly.
It is an open source operating system which is
3.1. Elevator algorithm freely available on many devices and cell phones. It is
currently the most widely used operating system. The
The elevator algorithm, is a simple algorithm by devices which work on android operating system are
which a single elevator can decide where to stop, is mostly available at affordable prices. People find
summarized as follows: working with android operating system easy and
efficient i.e. it is handy and much user friendly.
In computer operating systems, the elevator algorithm Android softwares are developed using Android
has found an application as an algorithm for Studio, Eclipse, etc.
scheduling hard disk requests. Modern elevators use more
complex heuristic algorithms to decide which request to 4.2. Android Studio
service next.
Android Studio is the Integrated Development
1. The current floor of elevator is stored as current. Environment (IDE) for Android application development,
2. When user selects a floor, where he wants to based on IntelliJ IDEA. In Android studio, the front end i.e.
reach, then that floor’s position is stored as the UI is developed using xml files whereas the backend is
new_pos. developed using java files. It also has an inbuilt package
3. Then that value is compared with current value in named SQLiteOpenHelper to develop the database. We just
order to determine the direction of the elevator have to extend the class inorder to perform database
(up or down). operations. Android studio offers many inbuilt services.
4. Then the new_pos is incremented/decremented They are:
accordingly and that position is stored as current
and the process goes on. 1. An efficient gradle building system.
2. A user-friendly environment for coders to develop
3.2. Principle android apps for developing handheld devices,
wearables, TVs, etc.
1. As soon as the application is opened, it launches 3. Instant Run option so that compilation and
itself and asks the use to login with his account running of projects would be faster.
name and password. If the user is new and wants 4. Facilities to import templates and GitHub codes
to create a new account, he can contact an which provides a great help for the programmers.
authorized person, who can us the security 5. Perfect testing tools and easily updating facilities.
password and create new account with all the 6. Now, in the newer versions of android studio, it
required details. has inbuilt facilities to connect with firebase which
2. The application welcomes you with a message and provides an online database.
asks if you want to follow the regular routine and 7. Building light weight applications to serve day to
reach its usual floor which is his work place or day needs of users.
residence. 8. It also provides support for connection to various
3. If the destination floor is different than the usual hardware using Bluetooth or wireless fidelity.
destination, the user can choose any mode of input

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4.3. Extensible markup language (XML) 2. A special start states.

3. Set of final or accepting state.
In Android Studio's platform, we can quickly build 4. A set of transitions from one state to another
layouts by dragging widgets into a visual design editor labelled with characters that is the operation like,
instead of writing the layout XML. Extensible Mark-up up or down. [6]
Language (XML) is a mark-up language. The design goals of
XML are simplicity, generality and usability across the
Internet. It is used to design the front end of the
android applications.

It provides various attributes to the layouts

and widgets in order to give a simple and elegant
view to the application.
Fig. 1: Finite Automata
5.FINITE AUTOMATA
A finite automaton is a simple machine used to 6. APPLICATIONS
recognize patterns within input taken from some character
set (or alphabet). The job of finite automata is to accept or  Operators/controller of elevators-This application
reject an input depending on whether the entered input is provides an interface to the user to select the
in the pattern defined by the finite automata. Some of the destination floor from the current floor which
recent applications of finite automata are software he/she wants to reach and updates the current
engineering, parallel programming and VLSI designs. [1][5] counter value accordingly.
An elevator controller system is one of the applications  Used for offices where only authorized people can
of finite automata. It consists of a mechanism that does not use the elevators- As this application provides
remember the previous trajectory but, remembers only the security, only those users can use the lift who have
current floor. The direction of motion can be upward if the an account in this application.
current floor is not the top floor and the requested floor is  Used for security purpose and convenience of the
above it whereas, the direction of motion would be users- As only those users can login whose
downward if the current floor is not the ground floor and account exists in this application, this app is
the requested floor is below it. Therefore, at any instance secured. And this app automatically takes the user
of time, an elevator in use can be defined by following to its destination floor, in this way it provides
mathematical terms: convenience to the users.

1. States: finite set of states to present the possible 7. IMPLEMENTATION

requested floors from the current position.
2. Inputs: finite set of input depending upon the number 7.1. Basic Idea
of floors the building has.
3. Outputs: finite set of output depending upon the The secured elevator app is a basic android
user’s request. application and it implements the idea of lift. Its
connection with automata is discussed above. This
We can represent finite automata graphically, with app works in following manner:
nodes for state and arcs for transitions.
As it is a secured elevator, it can be used by only
The elevator controller is going to control the specific people who have the right to access it. There’s
operations and working of the elevator as per the need of an authority password for that purpose, the person
the user. Thus, the corresponding state diagram is for who knows the authority password can only create
designing of the finite automata for the working of elevator his/her account in this lift. For using this lift, it is must
controller. (Note that the given state diagram has been to have an account.
drawn according to the Mealy Machine). In reference with
the elevator working, the finite automata is useful in such a After account creation, the user can login by their
way that every destination floor can be reached from the username and password and have two options in
current floor only by going through all the floors that come front of them:
in its way. This operator will be work using buttons and
the controller will work according to the following state
(i) They can follow their daily routine
diagram [2][4].
(ii) They can go to some other floor today.
The following finite automaton consists of:
1. A finite set S of 5 states.

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If they choose the first option, they would reach to the login page is displayed and then the user is allowed to
desired floor which they step on daily. login.
Where as if they choose second option they would be
brought to a page where they have options to edit 8.3. Choosing new routine or daily routine
their account, delete their account, and view their
account.
This module prompts the user whether he/she wants
There is a navigation drawer which asks them which to follow their daily routine or want to go to some
type of user input they want to provide. other floor.

7.2. Input by buttons 8.4. Operations with database

This section allows user to edit, view and delete their
In this UI, there are 6 buttons numbered 0-5. The accounts.
button which user presses denotes the floor which
they want to go and there is a textview which displays 8.5. Selecting the type of input
the floor number. A loop goes on from current floor till
the expected floor. This section allows the user to choose which type of
input they want to give the three ways were discussed
7.3. Input by user above.

In this UI, there is a textview and a button. User enters

the floor no. which he/she expects to go and then
presses the go button. A loop goes on from the current
floor to the floor entered in the textview and then it is
displayed that you reached x floor.

7.4. Input through arrow keys

In this UI, there are two arrow keys up and down, and
a text view displaying the counter if the up-arrow
button is pressed the number in the textview is
incremented by one, if down arrow is pressed, the
value in the texview is decremented by one. If the
users desired floor number is entered in the text view
the user will have to press ‘go’ button then again, a
loop continues till the target floor and the it is
displayed that you reached x floor.
Fig. 2: Deleting Account
8.MODULES
8.1. Login

This module will ask for username and password of

the person. If the username and password match and
record in the database then the user is directed to the
‘Choosing new routine or daily routine’ page else the
user is prompted with incorrect username and
password and is told to re-enter it.

8.2. Account creation

This module allows the user to create his/her account
if the user is authorized. This module will ask for
authority password and then only allows to create an
account. And then the user has to fill four details
username, password, profession, and most important
Fig. 3: Login Account
the floor that he want to go most of the times. Then the

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Fig. 4: Input Using Arrow Keys Fig. 7: Message Display

9. CONCLUSIONS

 An elevator controller operator using finite automata

can be created by using platform independent
programming languages such as java.
 The users can be served with convenience, efficiency
and security by using the facility of user accounts.
 Hence in this way, Finite automata can be used to
control elevators and system having different states.
 Thus, this application provides different convenient
modes to operate the elevator and also provides
secured access to the elevator.

REFERENCES

Fig. 5: Operations With Account [1] An introduction to formal languages and automata by
Peter Linz.
[2] Lustig, A. "Lift Simulation Program", Elevator World,
March, 1986, pp. 74-79.
[3] Hummet, G.T.; T.D. Moser; B.A. Bowell. "Real Time
Simulation of Elevators", Winter Simulation
Conference, Miami Beach, Dec 4-6, 1978, pp. 393-402.
[4] Barney, G.C., "Lift Simulation Using PC's", Proceedings
of ELEVCON'88, IAEE, Karlsruhe, W. Germ.,
June, 1988, pp. 22-29.
[5] John E. Hopcroft, Jeffery D. Ullman, “Introduction to
Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation”.
[6] “Introduction to Theory of Computation” by Michael
Sipser
[7] http://www.eastersealstech.com/2014/07/16/evolu
tion-elevators/
[8] http://www.livescience.com/57282-elevator-
Fig. 6: Home Page history.html

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