> Destination Dispatch [...] are in general worse
I wonder if this is an artifact of how the author used random destinations. I worked in a building that used Destination Dispatch, and the common travel pattern seemed to be:
- Everyone who is not on the ground floor generally want to go to the ground floor.
- People who are on the ground floor generally travel in large groups to the same destination.
This happens because people who worked on the same floor often leave for lunch at the same time, and return at the same time to the same floor. Destination Dispatch helps in this case because it's batching large groups of people with the same destination.
Yeah, and definitely is not the right story for hotels. His premise of "morning traffic mostly from lobby to floors" is completely false in an hotel where you get it both ways due to people going down for breakfast and going back up and the down once again.
I see hotels with the kiosk model changing the UI depending on breakfast rush hour
Yes, it's definitely more likely for an individual already in an upper floor to return to ground than a stop above or below. The people queuing up in simulations don't seemingly get this right all the time.
Also the group of people going to or returning from lunch is real as well. The grouping factor happens more at the middle of the day and less at the morning or evening. Primarily because of lunch.
Cruise ships that use destination dispatch have been much nicer too. Ships that use the older algorithms are a pain to wait during peak times. Guess plus side you’ll use the stairs more.
Is it because the criteria is wait time not travel time? Destination dispatch would avoid some extra stops on the trip.
I just visited a new building with destination dispatch, so it seems to be still around.
My EE roommate in college had to build an elevator circuit as a final problem. It was on a bread board and had a bunch of call buttons and had a motor and a clear disk with black squares so it could figure out where it was…. I think it was the simple algorithm…
> Is it because the criteria is wait time not travel time?
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense to optimize wait time instead of total time from pressing the button to reaching destination.
Human psychology might allow other reasonable criteria even if perfectly rational choice is just total time to destination.
> - People who are on the ground floor generally travel in large groups to the same destination.
I also thought that this is one of the biggest reasons destination dispatch was better.
There are even articles about switching to destination dispatch in office buildings or hotels lead to dramatic reductions in wait time.
Surely there's a dataset out there with elevator calls for an office building you could test on, instead of the poor random destination case.
Surprisingly, claude failed to find a good one.
Also, part of destination dispatch (I'm guessing based on experience) removes the 'stopping on every floor problem', so the real test would be total time including wait at that point I think.