Oddbean new post about login | logout Elevators in high rise buildings should use LIDAR or similar tech to continuously scan the interior to determine how much capacity is available. If the elevator is near capacity, it shouldn't stop at floors being requested by new passengers.
Elevators can just weight people to do that. They already do weight them and if the total weight exceeds safety threshold they don t operate.
That's better than nothing but it would fail to account for situations where someone is moving large lightweight items that take up tons of floor capacity.
The biggest part of an elevator ride is the opening and closing of doors. So the solution actually would be to get people within 1-2 floors of their destination. So if you walk in and someone already selected floor 20 and you want to go to 21, you aren't able to select 21. You have to get off at 20. Same thing to get in. If someone already called an elevator to 1 floor from you, you can't call it for your floor. Give people with mobility issues a Key that overrides this.
You don’t need LIDARs. You can just weigh people. The scale is already there to prevent the overloading.
Except there are edge cases like when someone wheels a large lightweight cart into the elevator. Scale can't detect that there's no usable floor space.