Designing Traffic-Sensitive Controllers for Multi-Car Elevators Through Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimization

Abstract

Multi-Car Elevator (MCE) that has several elevator cars in a single shaft attracts attention for improvement of transportation in high-rise buildings. However, because of lack of experience of such novel systems, design of controller for MCE is very difficult engineering problem. One of the promising approaches is application of evolutionary optimization to from-scratch optimization of the controller through discrete event simulation of the MCE system. In the present paper, the authors propose application of evolutionary multi-objective optimization to design of traffic-sensitive MCE controller. The controller for MCE is optimized for different traffic conditions in multi-objective way. By combining the multi-objective optimization with the exemplar-based policy (EBP) representation that has adequate flexibility and generalization ability as a controller, we can successfully design a controller that performs well both in the different traffic conditions and works adequately by generalization in the conditions not used in the optimization process.