Futuristic elevators; from self-climbing robotic installations to metacores and PORT tech

1 150 years of the past, the present and the future
2 Schindler City Centre Tour
3 Robotic Installation System for Elevators R.I.S.E.
4 PORT Innovation Lab
5 MetaCore and PORT tech
6 Smart Mirrors
7 MetaCore user’s process
8 Vertical villages
9 Related articles on Designing Buildings

[edit] 150 years of the past, the present and the future

For 150 years, Swiss manufacturing company Schindler have been making cities more mobile through their elevators, escalators, and moving walkways, and today they move a staggering two billion people a day.

In October, it was announced they were a TIME’s World’s Best Company of 2024. After receiving an invite to their Trade Media Day in August, I take a flight to the beautiful city of Lucerne in Switzerland to visit Schindler’s impressive Ebikon Campus and see how the multibillion dollar company started, how it operates, and their ambitions for the future.

[edit] Schindler City Centre Tour

The first item on the agenda is the Schindler City Centre Tour: an interactive exhibition that takes us through the history of the company. After catching an escalator with projections of skyscrapers and hustle-and-bustle city sounds all around us that aim to transport us to the imagined “Schindler City”, we are greeted by a ginormous, abstract model city comprised of buildings around the world in which Schindler’s lifts operate. Scanning certain buildings with an iPad brings information about them and the sheer number of lifts each of them have in operation, as little red augmented reality lifts move up and down them on the screen. Also in the room is a timeline of the company’s history and, under glass, antique hydraulics and other parts of Schindler’s old elevators (sure to interest those more mechanically minded ATs).

Elsewhere, we see a closer look at one of the company’s very first lifts, right next to a modern and innovative design for a modern skyscraper that is two lifts on top of each other, as well as a fascinating look inside an escalator – we can literally see the gears turning. The tour ends with the tour group tapping an interactive table to design our city of the future – a dazzling display of lights and sound. This emphasis placed on the future would be further explored later in the day, during my visit to the “PORT Innovation Lab” ( see section below)

[edit] Robotic Installation System for Elevators R.I.S.E.

Speaking of the future, the most interesting part of the tour for the technologist in my eyes is the close look we get at Schindler R.I.S.E – or the Robotic Installation System for Elevators.R.I.S.E is the world’s first self-climbing,autonomous robotic installation system for elevators.

A large rectangle held by pulleys, it has a multi-jointed robot arm at its base that drills and sets the anchor bolts required for landing doors, divider beams and wall brackets. Not only this but it also scans for obstacles in its way, determines rebar locations and travels from floor to floor, all completely autonomously.All the construction team need to do is the on-site loading, as well as the transporting to and suspension into the elevator shaft. There is also a wireless user interface for the operator,with statistics and information from the robot’s work, all remotely monitored.

My informative and friendly tour guide Rolf Schwerzmann, who is also Global Account Manager, informs me use of R.I.S.E will massively increase safety and efficiency on construction sites in the future. On the safety side, well, the robot handles repetitive and physically draining tasks for workers, reduces the time they spend in elevator shafts, and limits their exposure to hazards,construction noise,vibration, and dust. In terms of efficiency, the robot can work round the clock and has set a new standard for lift system installation speed.

But if a robot can work more efficiently than a human, will widespread use of R.I.S.E – as is Schindler’s plan – potentially put construction professionals out of the job in the future? Schindler do not seem worried about that, believing that new technologies will always make the sector more appealing, which will help to attract and retain talents. And demand means buildings are growing taller and wider, and much faster,so talented people will always be needed.

Schindler R.I.S.E has been successfully deployed on numerous construction sites around the world and, I am told, now has its first gig in London, on a brand new skyscraper.

[edit] PORT Innovation Lab

Schindler are keen for their ambitions be known. Their PORT Innovation Lab – a 90-minute multimedia journey taking place in a cinema, demonstration room, and planetarium – showcases the company’s cutting edge new technology and illustrates the revolutionary ways a simple system could shape the future of the urban environment. By the end of the presentation, it was hard not to be convinced that Schindler’s designs might change our cities forever.

This system is Schindler’s MetaCore, which looks to use their PORT destination control technology to usher in a more sustainable, accessible future, with affordability in mind, tackling both the housing crisis and the climate disaster. With the Paris Agreement’s bold but necessary aim of reaching net zero by 2050 looming large,and with a predicted 80 percent of the buildings that will make up our cities by then ones that are already built, Schindler are aware of the increasing importance of retrofitting and repurposing. With more people working from home and less office space being filled, skyscrapers in our modern cities are increasingly becoming akin to film props: great to look at, but
hollow inside.

The solution, then, appears to be to retrofit these high rise buildings to make them more than offices, with some floors being offices, others apartments; others perhaps gyms, laundrettes, whatever is needed. But, when it comes to elevators and mobility, some major issues come up when we start thinking along those lines. The first is about cost. If you have two sets of users – residents and office-users – you need two sets of elevators, don’t you? To repurpose a building dozens of stories tall to accommodate for multiple elevator lines is a costly and long process. Or if you cut that corner and have one set of lifts, you will have a lot of dissatisfied users: imagine an entrepreneur trying to impress an external stakeholder having to share a lift with a resident taking his dog for a walk, or residents waiting ages for and then having to share a cramped lift with the morning commute when all they wanted to do was go for a brisk jog.

[edit] MetaCore and PORT tech

MetaCore’s goal is to solve these issues by utilising innovations in their PORT destination control technology to negate the issues of having one set of lifts, providing an adaptable passenger experience that enables buildings to be repurposed, and their functionality reconfigured not just once, but endlessly, extending their lifespan immeasurably.

Their PORT tech, when first developed, allowed users to tap in their preferred floor when calling a lift. Modern innovations take things several steps further. Let’s say you are a resident, entering through the lobby. To get into the building, you beep through a gate, using an app or simply Bluetooth. The system instantly assigns you a lift to your floor, shown on a display screen at the gate (“Go to Lift A”, say), knowing through using a digital twin and tracking everyone in the building how to keep congestion to a minimum and ensure you only ever share a lift with other residents, not workers. With this new technology, “we end the Century-old concept of one elevator group per group of passengers,” says Group Head of Transit Management and Digital Ecosystems, Florian Troesch, giving Architectural Technologists “an urgently needed tool to make cities more flexible in the future.”

[edit] Smart Mirrors

The system knows a resident is getting into the elevator, and so lights it with warmer,more homely lights than with its worker bees. That is not all though. I was impressed by the options presented to me by their Digital Media Services team, which turns elevators into communication platforms with on-screen displays. As a resident, you might see weather updates, community events, or resident notices here. As an office worker, you might see stocks and shares, canteen menus, or perhaps your calendar reminding you of up coming meetings. I also saw the rmulti-media Smart Mirror, which projected these same displays but with the incredibly cool double functionality of also being a mirror. This gives the displays a 3Dholographic feel, making it really feel like a lift from the future.

This would not be the only time in my day at Schindler I felt their technology was transporting me into the future, and as I saw a demonstration of the next part of the MetaCore user’s process, I was blown away.

[edit] MetaCore user’s process

Sensor doors that slide open have long been a staple of science fiction, but with Schindler’s new prototype, they are now a reality. Blending in seamlessly with the wall, they open using Bluetooth sensors, with the front and back sides being
two panels that push into each other and then slide into the side of the wall. If this prototype ends up becoming a common feature of future buildings and renovations, which I suspect it will, Architectural Technologists will have a freedom in not having to account for the swing of a large door when drawing up their room plans.

If you were thinking, “what is a lift company doing designing sci-fi front doors to apartments?”, the MetaCore team at Schindler have anticipated your question. Lifts and escalators are all about mobility and accessibility, and this technology is, according to Michael Guarisco, Business Development Manager of the PORT Innovation Lab, “a revolution in mobility”, bringing indoor mobility “to a totally new level”. A resident could get from outside the building to inside their flat without lifting a finger, allowing those with mobility issues easy access and doing away with door handles forever.

The Bluetooth-paired functionality also allows more futuristic innovations, such as letting non-humans in. If you have a Bluetooth-enabled collar for your cat, for example, as an animation displayed for me, the door would be programmed to open just a crack when he approaches, allowing him through but not leaving your door wide open for intruders. In fact, there would also be an alarm system set further up the door, so burglars couldn’t take your cat and use him to slip through the crack and get into your home. I don’t know what would happen if your cat likes to jump through the door,or if your Bluetooth disconnects from the collar, but as this is still at prototype stage they have plenty of time to fine tune it. I was impressed at the no-stone-unturned attitude towards making this an efficient and hands-free way of accessing a modern home.

As if that wasn’t enough, when Guarisco showed me the prototype in action, I watched the door slide open in front of me and a service robot roll out, ready to operate. (As I said, it was hard not to feel like I’d been transported into the future.) I could imagine the leaps forward in housekeeping efficiency this could create for large hotels and high rises that have a lot of rooms to keep clean and tidy. What this would mean for those working in housekeeping as cleaners and custodians, on the other hand, is a potentially scary thought, though I got the sense that Schindler are thinking a lot further than the immediate future here.

[edit] Vertical villages

All this future-focussed future proofing and innovation led to their final coupe de grace: Schindler’s ambition to use this technology to build the “vertical village”. As the cinema screen displaying the introductory video to this concept moved across the room, shrinking and revealing a wide-open hall ahead, I saw in front of me a planetarium – dazzlingly lit up to look like Earth itself.

Inside the planetarium I was shown a video of a building complex going up and up and up, with vast green spaces, children playing in playgrounds 50 feet in the air, and towers built upon towers upon towers. This is Schindler’s true vision for the future. It is the world in a single skyscraper, life in a high rise relinquished of the isolation and coldness it can bring, with an ever-present focus on community, connection, and nature.

Being immersed in a screen that encompasses your whole vision is known to be overwhelming, but as I felt myself travel up and up this building that seemed to have no end, I wondered for a moment whether this is the utopic solution Schindler want it to be or whether it is more akin to what J. G. Ballard was warning us about in his novel High-Rise that sees a community lose touch with life outside their high rise building, with disastrous results. But when I switch off my doomer brain, I remember that throughout the presentation, the Schindler MetaCore team showed a deep consideration for the well-being of residents; it was at the heart of their thought process when dreaming up these game-changing designs.

In these modern times, as the presence of imminent climate disaster looms ever larger, Schindler is offering the cities of the future cutting edge technology that puts mental wellbeing and sustainability first. This is commitment to sustainability on a grand and admirably far-reaching scale. Though the height of Schindler’s ambition for the vertical city might be too far in the future to comprehend, MetaCore focusses on innovative sustainable solutions to our most pressing problems, with tech that could help put an end to the housing crisis, help us reach net zero, and fight back against climate disaster.

It’s clear that, for this world-class elevator company, the future is looking up. “We really believe that, in the same way that the elevator has enabled the cities of today,” concludes Troesch, “MetaCore will enable the cities of the future.”

This article appears in the AT Journal issue 152 Winter 2024 as 'My Schindler City Centre tour: the past, the future, and the R.I.S.E system' and as 'The future is elevated: A look inside Schindler’s innovative new designs and how they might usher in a brighter future for our cities' both were written by Tim Fraser, Deputy Editor of the AT Journal.

--CIAT