...that the video game, Pong, was invented by a guy who graduated at the bottom of his engineering class? Nolan Bushnell spent more time running the games at a local amusement park than he did on his studies at the University of Utah. His dreams of working for Disney's amusement empire were dashed when the company wouldn't hire him. Taking a boring job, Nolan daydreamed about electronic versions of popular games. He invented Pong, the first video game, and went on to found Atari Co.
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 8172044 | Elevator system An elevator system including a car call registration device by which an elevator user registers a car call before riding on a car and a group supervisory controller with a building specification data storage section in which building specification data including spe... | 05/08/2012 |
| 8028806 | Method of dispatching an elevator car including an expected arrival time of a passenger near an elevator car A method of dispatching an elevator car to a destination requested by a passenger before the passenger enters the car includes determining which trip of the elevator car begins at a time having a desired relationship to an expected arrival time when a passenger is e... | 10/04/2011 |
| 7963372 | Evacuation assistance device for elevator An elevator evacuation support apparatus evacuates building occupants that have been left inside a building to a refuge floor in an emergency by managing operation of an elevator in which a plurality of floors function as service floors. The elevator evacuation supp... | 06/21/2011 |
| 7926621 | Evacuation assistance device for elevator In a building, a service zone including a plurality of floors is set. The building is provided with an elevator that is assigned to the floors in the service zone as service floors. In an event of a fire in the building, an evacuation support apparatus for the eleva... | 04/19/2011 |
| 7849974 | Method of dispatching an elevator car An elevator system (20) includes a plurality of cars (22) and destination entry devices (40) located some distance from the elevator cars (22). A controller (38) dispatches an elevator car to a requested destination entered by a pa... | 12/14/2010 |
| 7677363 | Evacuation assistance device for elevator A rescue floor crowdedness detecting device detects crowdedness or uncrowdedness of an elevator region at a rescue floor. An evacuation guidance device installed in a building reports to those stranded in the building accessibility information representing accessibi... | 03/16/2010 |
| 7426982 | Elevator group supervisory control system An elevator group control system is provided which stably keeps cage's position in temporally equal interval condition over a long period of time. The present invention provides a system comprising: reference route generating means, which for each elevator, g... | 09/23/2008 |
| 7370732 | Method and device for automatic checking of the availability of an elevator installation A method for automatic checking of the availability of an elevator installation having at least one elevator ascertains at least one first estimated value for a use frequency of the elevator for a first time period and/or a second estimated value for the use frequen... | 05/13/2008 |
| 7275623 | Allocating landing calls in an elevator group using a cost function An elevator group control method for the allocation of calls, in which method a given service time of the elevator group is assigned a target value. The service time may be passenger waiting time, call time, traveling time, riding time or an average value of one of ... | 10/02/2007 |
| 7267202 | Elevator dispatching with guaranteed time performance using real-time service allocation The registration of each hall call (20, 21) is recorded (27) and the remaining response time of all available cars to each up hall call and each down hall call is determined. The response time for each car to answer is compared against a limit and a ta... | 09/11/2007 |
| 7198136 | Elevator device for a multi-sky-lobby system An elevator system is provided with multiple sky lobbies to reduce the space required for elevator shafts and the space required for the entire elevator system, as well as the required elevator speed and motor capacity. Sky lobbies Ls1–Lsx | 04/03/2007 |
| 7152714 | Elevator car separation based on response time The time required for each car to reach each up hall call and each down hall call is calculated (30, 33). These times are then arranged in categories and the number of landings in each category is identified. From fuzzy sets (FIGS. 7–10), the count o... | 12/26/2006 |
| 7108106 | Control for allocating main floor destination calls to multiple deck elevator A device for controlling a elevator installation with multiple deck cars which are simultaneously accessible at a main stopping point by different main stopping floors includes a call registering device by which a passenger can input a destination floor. In order to... | 09/19/2006 |
| 7083027 | Elevator group control method using destination floor call input A method controls the elevators in an elevator group when destination floor call input is used and the traffic within the elevator group is to be optimized. According to the concept of the method, based on traffic intensity, a cost function is optimized by changing ... | 08/01/2006 |
| 7040458 | Elevator destination protocol control with flexible user interface An elevator system having multiple elevator cars efficiently assigns cars and communicates the car assignments to the potential passengers. A hallway intuitive user interface is readily adapted to installations having varying numbers of elevator cars with varying fl... | 05/09/2006 |
| 7025180 | Method of and device for controlling an elevator installation with zonal control A method of controlling an elevator installation having a plurality of cars in a building with floors subdivided into several zones wherein travel orders are allocated to the cars. There is no allocation to an elevator car, which has just been allocated a travel ord... | 04/11/2006 |
| 7021429 | Elevator system indicating assigned car An elevator system includes a hall operation panel in an elevator hall and from which a destination floor is input; a group control which assigns a car to be stopped at the destination floor input from the hall operation panel; hall lanterns in the elevator hall for... | 04/04/2006 |
| 7014015 | Method and system for scheduling cars in elevator systems considering existing and future passengers A method schedules cars of an elevator system in a building. The method begins execution whenever a newly arrived passenger presses an up or down button to generate a call for service. For each car, determine a first waiting time for all existing passengers if the c... | 03/21/2006 |
| 6997288 | Floor number display at landing and in car, informative to elevator passengers Floor number displays informative to the elevator passengers at the landing and in the elevator car when the passengers issue destination calls to the elevator. ... | 02/14/2006 |
| 6978863 | Apparatus for elevator group control In an apparatus for elevator group control which performs group management of a set of elevators, the set consisting of an upper car and a lower car which are disposed in a vertical relation within one elevator shaft and which ascend and descend independently, the f... | 12/27/2005 |
| 6976560 | Service/equipment equalization destination system for elevators An elevator car equalization computer program product includes software instructions for enabling a computer to perform predetermined operations, a computer readable medium bearing the software instructions, and a computer system including a processor and a memory. ... | 12/20/2005 |
| 6945365 | Method for allocating passengers to an elevator A method for the allocation of passengers in an elevator group. The group has several elevator lobbies and multi-door elevators. Each passenger gives his/her destination floor by means of a call input device, so that the passenger's starting and destination floors a... | 09/20/2005 |
| 6328135 | Modifying elevator group behavior utilizing complexity theory The position and direction (0-27, FIG. 2) of each elevator car (A-D) in a group of cars is recorded along with time and traffic rate of the elevator group to provide a data stream. The canonic representation of the position and direction data is reduced, ... | 12/11/2001 |
| 6325178 | Elevator group managing system with selective performance prediction A rule base storing control rule sets predicts elevator group management performance, such as waiting time distribution, obtained when applying each rule set stored in the rule base to the current traffic situation, and selects a rule set in accordance wi... | 12/04/2001 |
| 6257373 | Apparatus for controlling allocation of elevators based on learned travel direction and traffic An administrative controlling apparatus for elevators, for calling an elevator before a passenger's operation of a hall call button when a passenger who has come to an elevator hall is detected by passenger detection devices. The direction in which the pa... | 07/10/2001 |
| 6176351 | Double deck elevator allocation controlling apparatus An controlling apparatus for a double deck elevator is disclosed. An allocation control unit (5), when a predetermined specified floor is registered in an elevator hall call registering unit (4) in a double operation mode, makes both of upper and lower ca... | 01/23/2001 |
| 6173816 | Hallway-entered destination information in elevator dispatching The estimation of the amount of time required by a given elevator to reach a given hall call, known as remaining response time (RRT), can be improved by using not only the present car position, its direction, and the number of intervening stops for alread... | 01/16/2001 |
| 6145631 | Group-controller for elevator A group-supervising control system for an elevator includes a cage position prediction unit for predicting cage positions after a predetermined time period based on the present positions, a service available time period distribution calculation unit for c... | 11/14/2000 |
| 6065570 | Control system for a plurality of groups of lifts with destination call control system The invention concerns a control system for a plurality of groups of lifts (G1-G5), according to which system the passenger can input his destination at any destination call input device (TE) without having to know which group of lifts (G1-G5) serves the ... | 05/23/2000 |
| 5936212 | Adjustment of elevator response time for horizon effect, including the use of a simple neural network For elevator car dispatching scenarios, the standard remaining response time (RRT) estimation is augmented by a selected amount of time where a horizon floor is to be served before reaching the hall call to be assigned. The augmentation may be made by add... | 08/10/1999 |
| 5892190 | Method and system of controlling elevators and method and apparatus of inputting requests to the control system Elevator group supervisory control method and system for group supervisory control of a plurality of elevators serving a plurality of floors. The method and apparatus of the invention permits the inputting of qualitative requests (guidance), from the user... | 04/06/1999 |
| 5767462 | Open loop fuzzy logic controller for elevator dispatching A group controller for controlling elevator cars in a building having a plurality of floors includes a traffic and traffic rate estimator for providing fuzzy estimates of traffic and traffic rate; an open loop fuzzy logic controller for providing a contro... | 06/16/1998 |
| 5679932 | Group management control method for elevator system employing traffic flow estimation by fuzzy logic using variable value preferences and decisional priorities An improved group management control method for an elevator capable of efficiently performing a group management control of an elevator based upon the building condition by deciding a corresponding car to be allocated in accordance with a predetermined ha... | 10/21/1997 |
| 5668356 | Elevator dispatching employing hall call assignments based on fuzzy response time logic Each car in a group of elevator cars in a building is determined to be available or not depending on whether it is assigned in the group, whether it is the only delayed car, whether it is fully loaded without intervening car calls which comprise all the c... | 09/16/1997 |
| 5663538 | Elevator control system An elevator system for a multistory structure having a plurality of elevator shafts is shown which includes at least one independently movable elevator car in each elevator shaft. A digital computer with memory is used to control elevator cars including t... | 09/02/1997 |
| 5648645 | Elevator excess speed detector with multiple light barrier An apparatus for detecting excess speed of an elevator car travelling in an elevator shaft includes a vertically extending measuring strip is mounted at one side of the shaft and a multichannel forked light barrier assembly mounted on the car with a pair ... | 07/15/1997 |
| 5625176 | Crowd service enhancements with multi-deck elevators In an elevator dispatching system controlling the assignment of elevator cars in a building, a method of assigning a multi-deck elevator car includes determining if a crowd exists at a floor in the building; if it is determined that the crowd exists at th... | 04/29/1997 |
| 5612519 | Method and apparatus for assigning calls entered at floors to cars of a group of elevators A group elevator control includes a call allocation device which automatically adapts to optimization criteria and traffic conditions so that an optimum call assignment is achieved. The device includes a solution selection module which calculates starting... | 03/18/1997 |
| 5563386 | Elevator dispatching employing reevaluation of hall call assignments, including fuzzy response time logic An elevator car call is reassigned if a different car fortuitously shows up first, or if the assigned car leaves the group. The call is reassigned, one time only, if the assigned car is delayed by more than a threshold, or under certain circumstances, if ... | 10/08/1996 |
| 5480006 | Elevator downpeak sectoring During downpeak time period of an elevator system, cars are assigned to sectors of an approximately equal number of floors with remaining floors being assigned to sectors near the lobby, one car per sector. The invention provides a dispatching strategy fo... | 01/02/1996 |