DEVELOPMENT OF THE STATE MACHINE FOR THE DISTRIBUTED ELEVATOR CONTROL SYSTEM IMPLEMENTING CONTROLLER AREA NETWORK (CAN)

Abstract

In this work, a new Distributed Elevator Control System, DECS, in which the intelligence is distributed, is designed and tested in Windows simulation environment. DECS is made up of Lift-Objects and Stair-Objects. All these objects are connected to each other over Controller Area Network (CAN). The intelligence, running on the Lift-Object, is unique and named as Elevator State Machine, ESM. In DECS, local process-data of each object (request from a stair, direction of an elevator, current floor etc.) are caught and then broadcasted to other objects in regular intervals. All objects broadcast its state in turn. ESM for each object runs thereafter. The process is repeated for ever. The software module for the ESM is developed in C++. The module is designed as a dynamic link library and named as ELLib.dll. A CAN bus simulation library (CanBusServer.dll), which simulates the CAN bus protocol in Windows environment, is used to test the DECS. For this purpose, a window application, WinEL.exe, which links above two libraries and visualises the entire elevator control system is also developed in this work. These packages are made available on request by the author.