SAN FRANCISCO — There’s paint drying and then there’s listening to elevators talk, both calming and now both available online.
This week the Finnish elevator company Kone launched a website showing four of its elevators around the world talking to the cloud.
It’s a way for the company to show customers exactly what its Internet-connected elevators are doing.
“Our marketing people wondered if anyone had ever seen how machines really talk. So we decided to show it,” said Kone president and CEO Henrik Ehrnrooth.
The real-time page shows four elevators communicating with Kone’s cloud-based network that feeds into IBM’s Watson platform. There’s also an audio function that allows visitors to listen to the conversation.
The messages are translated into English from machine data, Ehrnrooth said.
So what exactly does that look like?
On Friday at 11:35 am, the elevator in Illinois told Kone’s main computer that it was experiencing “minimal sway while starting my way down.”
The Kone network replied, “Negligible sway. Keep going.”
A minute later the elevator reported, “Slight vibration on my way down,” to which the Kone network answered, “That was actually really smooth.”
The elevator is sending real-time data from its sensors and controls about how it’s functioning to the cloud, where Kone collects all the information and then uses IBM’s Watson Internet of Things platform to sift through for issues.
“We might see that the doors are closing a little more slowly on a certain elevator, and that could mean that there’s a problem with the door motor or maybe some gravel is preventing it from closing fully,” Ehrenrooth told USA TODAY.
Watson analyzes the data to look for patterns and see if anything’s out of normal.
“If it sees that the door slowness is ongoing, it would send out a technician with the right parts to fix the problem, before it’s actually a problem,” he said.
The elevators are in Illinois, Stockholm, Sweden, Delft in the Netherlands and Espoo, Finland. The company doesn’t give their exact location to maintain privacy.
The translation isn’t actually a part of the data that’s transmitted.
For example, on Friday night in Illinois, the elevator reported that it was waiting on the first floor and that the temperature was 26.1° C (79 ° F).
The translation for its eavesdropping public: “Patience is a virtue. Somebody will ride soon,” the elevator replied.
Kone wants users to know that there’s no worry about anyone hacking into its elevators as the data flow is only outward. “You can’t send information to them,” the CEO said.
The company has about 1,000 of these cloud-connected elevators around the world. They’re especially popular in China, which is a growing market for the company.
“We’re thinking of adding an elevator in China to the page because right now when it’s night in Europe and in the United States it’s a bit boring. With China, there would always be elevators that were being used,” Ehrenrooth said.
Oh, and to see paint dry, just Google “Paint drying” and you’ll find multiple options.
