Double-deck elevator systems using Genetic Network Programming with reinforcement learning

Abstract

In order to increase the transportation capability of elevator group systems in high-rise buildings without adding elevator installation space, double-deck elevator system (DDES) is developed as one of the next generation elevator group systems. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have been employed to find some efficient solutions in the elevator group control systems during the late 20th century. Genetic Network Programming (GNP), a new evolutionary computation method, is reported to be employed as the elevator group system controller in some studies of recent years. Moreover, reinforcement learning (RL) is also verified to be useful for more improvements of elevator group performances when it is combined with GNP. In this paper, we proposed a new approach of DDES using GNP with RL, and did some experiments on a simulated elevator group system of a typical office building to check its efficiency. Simulation results show that the DDES using GNP with RL performs better than the one without RL in regular and down-peak time, while both of them outperforms a conventional approach and a heuristic approach in all three traffic patterns.