Abstract: With the continuous growth of the global population and the concentration of people in urban areas, the development of high-rise buildings has thrived, making elevator waiting time a significant concern. However, traditional elevators are unable to know passengers’ destination floors and waiting times in advance. Consequently, passengers often experience longer waiting times. With the flourishing advancement of the Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing, it has become feasible to know the demands of passengers in advance and how long they have been waiting. In this work, we propose SmartRide, an intelligent elevator system that provides reservation, check-in, boarding, and scheduling features. SmartRide allows users to reserve elevators in advance through a mobile app from anywhere. Artificial intelligence (AI) image recognition technology is employed for efficient check-in and boarding confirmation. Additionally, a novel scheduling algorithm is proposed to minimize the average waiting time by leveraging the reservation information. Experimental results demonstrate that SmartRide can accurately manage check-ins and boarding confirmations. SmartRide can also reduce waiting times by at least 30% compared to traditional elevator scheduling using FCFS (First Come First Served), thereby optimizing elevator operational efficiency and improving user experience.
