Mitsubishi Electric Corp. group said Tuesday it has developed technology that will allow elevators to stop automatically in an earthquake, check for damage and quickly restore operations if no problems are detected.
Conventional elevators are designed to stop automatically at the nearest floor if an earthquake with an intensity of lower 5 or higher on the Japanese seismic scale of 7 is detected.
But once stopped, the elevators are locked down. Engineers have to inspect and reset them before they can run again, causing long delays in service.
According to Mitsubishi Electric and Mitsubishi Electric Building Techno-Service Co., the new technology shuts down elevators affected by a quake for eight minutes, then performs test runs at low speeds for 20 minutes to determine whether there are any problems.
If no problems are found, the elevators are automatically restored to normal operation, they said.
If a problem is found, the elevators automatically notify an elevator maintenance company to dispatch an engineer, they said.