Research Paper on Elevator Arrival Times Published

Elevator transport capability is the focus of a research paper titled “When will an elevator arrive?” published in April in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics, Eurekalert reported on May 3. Physicist Zhijie Feng, a graduate student at Boston University, and Santa Fe Institute Professor Sidney Redner made a simple “toy” model, and their minimum-variable simulation made the following key assumptions: unoccupied buildings, first-come-first-served transport, identical elevators traveling to uniformly distributed destination floors, 2.5 s to enter or exit elevators, and 1 s to travel from one floor to the next. The results show that there is not an easy answer to the main question of elevator arrival times, but the pair hopes their research is the entry-level for further inquiry.