#524 - Efficient Escalation

Tech for escalators.. hmm... several years ago the firm I work for part-time got asked to do an escalator project, and on the face of it it seemed pretty mundane. The idea was that when somebody hit the emergency stop button, rather than stop dead (which they almost can), the idea was to use controlled negative acceleration to bring it to a rather more graceful halt. For a person escalator, that has some obvious advantages from a safety point of view, obviously - you don't fall off! Turned out to be a lot harder to do than anybody initially realised if you wanted accurate control, though. Simply because the slower it's going, the harder it is to get accurate positional accuracy from it, updated in real time (think about it). Got it to work, though - and I'm not saying how, because that's commercially sensitive... but the whole thing was a nightmare. As a result of that, I have to say that I *really* like the musical stairs! They have everything going for them - confusion, collisions, accidents, you name it!