Introduction

The rapid urbanization of cities has led to the construction of increasingly taller buildings, making elevators an indispensable part of modern infrastructure. Every day, millions of individuals rely on these systems for safe and efficient vertical transportation. This heavy reliance highlights the importance of ensuring that elevators are equipped with state-of-the-art safety measures to protect passengers in case of emergencies.

This white paper delves into the historical evolution of safety elevators, examines the current market dynamics, and explores how WebRTC technology is poised to redefine safety standards. By enabling real-time, two-way video communication, WebRTC not only enhances emergency response systems but also provides a foundation for improved situational awareness and passenger reassurance during critical events.

A Brief History of Safety Elevators

The invention of the safety elevator marked a transformative moment in architectural and industrial history. In 1852, Elisha Otis introduced the first safety elevator equipped with a pioneering fail-safe brake system. This innovation addressed a critical safety concern of the era—rope failure—by preventing the elevator from plummeting, paving the way for widespread adoption in buildings. As a result, the concept of vertical transportation became safer and more reliable, laying the foundation for the development of modern skyscrapers and urban infrastructure.

Over the subsequent decades, technological advancements revolutionized elevators, transitioning from manually operated systems requiring attendants to fully automated solutions. These modern elevators are equipped with essential safety features such as emergency brakes, advanced sensors, and sophisticated control mechanisms. Despite stringent safety regulations governing elevators today, there remains significant potential for innovation, particularly in emergency response systems. Enhanced solutions, such as real-time communication technologies, could address critical gaps in ensuring passenger safety during emergencies.

Growing Demand for Safety Elevators

Market Dynamics

The global elevator market is projected to reach $135 billion by 2030, fueled by several key factors:

• Urbanization: The rapid growth of urban centers and the rising number of high-rise developments have significantly increased the demand for elevators. As cities expand vertically to accommodate growing populations, the reliance on efficient and safe vertical transportation systems continues to grow.
• Regulations: Governments and industry regulators are enforcing stricter safety codes and standards, requiring elevator manufacturers to integrate advanced safety features. These include real-time monitoring systems, improved braking mechanisms, and enhanced emergency communication solutions to meet compliance requirements.
• Population Growth: With a steadily increasing global population, the demand for both residential and commercial buildings equipped with elevators has surged. This growth has led to a higher dependency on elevators as the primary mode of vertical transportation.

Challenges

Despite significant advancements in the elevator industry, many safety systems still depend on legacy technologies that fall short in addressing modern emergency scenarios. These outdated systems often lack real-time communication capabilities, making them insufficient for handling complex emergencies. The urgency for innovative solutions that provide real-time situational awareness and faster emergency response has never been greater, as these enhancements are critical to ensuring passenger safety and operational efficiency.

Rethinking Elevator Safety

Why Two-Way Video Communication?

Traditional safety measures, such as alarm buttons and intercoms, have long served as the primary means of communication in elevator emergencies. However, these systems rely solely on audio communication, which often proves insufficient during complex or high-stress situations. Passengers may struggle to convey the severity of their circumstances, and responders are left without a visual understanding of the emergency. This lack of clarity can lead to delayed or inadequate responses.

Two-way video communication systems address these limitations by introducing several critical benefits:

• Real-Time Visual Context: Live video feeds allow emergency teams to assess the situation visually, providing them with a clearer understanding of the problem and enabling them to formulate precise and effective responses.
• Passenger Reassurance: The ability to see and interact with emergency responders fosters a sense of security and confidence among passengers. Visual communication reduces panic and ensures that passengers feel supported throughout the incident.
• Improved Coordination: By offering visual and auditory information simultaneously, video feeds enable rescue teams to make more informed decisions quickly. This enhanced coordination between passengers and responders significantly improves the overall effectiveness of emergency operations.

Current Technologies in Elevator Emergency Systems

Modern elevators are equipped with:

1. Emergency Intercoms: Allow audio communication between passengers and building security, providing a basic means for passengers to report issues or seek assistance during emergencies.
2. Alarm Systems: These systems trigger alerts that notify maintenance teams, building security, or emergency responders about potential elevator malfunctions or trapped passengers. However, their effectiveness depends on the speed and quality of the response.
3. Automatic Emergency Brakes: Prevent free-fall scenarios by engaging a mechanical braking system in the event of a cable failure or other technical malfunction, ensuring passenger safety in critical moments.

Limitations

Despite these advancements, these systems still operate within significant constraints. They lack the ability to provide real-time visual information, leaving emergency responders without critical insights into the nature and severity of the situation. For instance, during medical crises or mechanical failures, responders must rely solely on verbal communication, which can lead to misinterpretations and delayed actions. Additionally, these systems do not support dynamic, two-way interaction that could streamline rescue operations or provide passengers with visual reassurance in high-stress scenarios.

The Role of WebRTC in Elevator Safety

WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is a transformative technology that enables real-time video and audio communication, paving the way for more efficient and reliable emergency response systems. Its integration into elevator safety mechanisms offers unparalleled advantages for both passengers and responders.

By implementing WebRTC in elevator systems, manufacturers can achieve several key benefits:

• Enhance Situational Awareness: Real-time video feeds provide emergency responders with a clear and immediate view of the situation inside the elevator. This visual context allows them to better understand the severity of the emergency and adapt their response accordingly.
• Accelerate Decision-Making: The ability to see and hear what is happening in real time significantly reduces response times. Emergency teams can quickly assess the situation and implement the most effective rescue strategies without relying solely on verbal descriptions.
• Improve Passenger Safety: A two-way video system not only ensures faster and more effective rescue operations but also reassures passengers by allowing them to see and communicate directly with responders. This visual connection helps to alleviate panic and builds trust during critical moments.

Technical Challenges in Hardware Integration

Constraints of Elevator Hardware

Elevator control systems often operate on:

• Minimalistic Linux-based OS: These systems are designed with minimal resources, primarily to run essential control applications, making it challenging to accommodate complex WebRTC functionalities.
• Low-Power CPUs: Typically, elevator CPUs are optimized for efficiency rather than performance, making them insufficient for demanding tasks like browser-based WebRTC implementations that require significant processing power.
• Limited Hardware Support: Many elevator systems lack advanced capabilities for handling video and audio processing, relying instead on basic functionalities tailored for operational efficiency.

Challenges

1. Lack of Browser Environments: The absence of browsers, which are traditionally needed to run WebRTC applications, necessitates developing native implementations that work seamlessly within the hardware constraints.
2. Limited GPU Availability: Elevator systems rarely include GPUs or similar hardware accelerators, which are essential for handling video encoding and decoding tasks efficiently. This limitation increases the load on already constrained CPUs.
3. Performance Bottlenecks: Single-threaded operations can overwhelm the CPU, leading to issues such as stuttering video or audio glitches. The inability to distribute processing tasks across multiple threads exacerbates these challenges in real-time communication scenarios.
4. Network Constraints: Elevators often rely on intermittent or low-bandwidth connectivity, adding another layer of complexity for maintaining high-quality real-time communication.
5. Power Consumption Concerns: Any additional processing or hardware acceleration must remain within strict power usage limits to avoid impacting the overall energy efficiency of the elevator system.

Building a Native WebRTC Solution for Elevators

To overcome these challenges, Videoedge developed a bespoke solution designed to address the unique constraints of elevator hardware while ensuring seamless functionality and reliability. This solution incorporates the following components:

1. Native libWebRTC Build:
   • Compiled WebRTC libraries specifically for the target hardware to ensure compatibility and optimal performance.
   • Conducted extensive optimizations to minimize resource consumption, allowing the solution to run smoothly on low-power CPUs, on a NXP IMX6 dual-core processor
   • Integrated custom patches to handle network disruptions effectively, ensuring consistent video and audio quality.
2. C++ Application:
   • Leveraged RTC peer connection objects to establish secure, reliable real-time communication channels.
   • Implemented custom signaling mechanisms for efficient connection setup, even in environments with intermittent network connectivity.
   • Added robust error-handling routines to address hardware and network failures without service interruptions.
3. Media Capture:
   • Developed browser-equivalent getUserMedia functionalities to directly access the elevator’s cameras and microphones.
   • Implemented lightweight drivers for seamless hardware interaction, reducing latency and enhancing audio-visual quality.
4. Rendering Layer:
   • Used GStreamer and libgtk to render video and audio streams efficiently, ensuring smooth playback and real-time responsiveness.
5. Hardware Acceleration:
   • Exploited GPU capabilities where available to offload video encoding and decoding tasks, reducing CPU usage significantly.
   • Optimized for both software and hardware acceleration modes, ensuring flexibility across different hardware configurations.
6. Multithreading:
   • Distributed workloads across multiple threads to avoid performance bottlenecks and ensure consistent operation under load.
   • Designed thread-safe mechanisms to prevent conflicts, ensuring stable and glitch-free communication.

Beyond Elevators: Industrial Applications of WebRTC

The capabilities developed for elevator safety systems can be extended to a wide range of industrial use cases, showcasing the versatility and transformative potential of WebRTC technology:

Industry 4.0

• Real-Time Monitoring and Troubleshooting: WebRTC enables live video streams to monitor manufacturing equipment, allowing operators to identify and resolve issues proactively. This reduces downtime and improves overall efficiency.
• Remote Inspections and Maintenance: Engineers can use live video feeds to inspect machinery and perform maintenance remotely, cutting down travel costs and ensuring faster issue resolution. WebRTC-based solutions also allow experts to collaborate globally in real-time, further enhancing operational capabilities.
• Worker Safety: Real-time video can provide a continuous view of high-risk operations, alerting teams to potential hazards and enabling immediate intervention when required.

Automotive Use Cases

• Video Telematics: Live video feeds improve driver safety by assisting with navigation and providing real-time diagnostics. These systems also facilitate fleet monitoring, ensuring vehicles operate efficiently and safely.
• Enhanced Customer Engagement: Automotive dealerships can integrate WebRTC to offer live virtual tours and real-time demonstrations of vehicles, improving customer experience and driving sales. By combining video communication with interactive features, dealerships can cater to customers who prefer remote consultations.
• Vehicle Maintenance: Real-time communication between drivers and service technicians enables immediate troubleshooting and guidance, minimizing downtime for vehicles on the road.

Other Industrial Scenarios

• Mining and Construction: Remote safety monitoring ensures that workers in hazardous environments have a direct line of communication with safety teams. Real-time video also helps coordinate large-scale operations efficiently.
• Oil and Gas: WebRTC provides real-time communication during critical operations, such as pipeline inspections or offshore drilling activities. This ensures safety protocols are followed and that issues are addressed promptly, even in remote locations.
• Healthcare and Remote Support: Beyond traditional industrial use cases, WebRTC can also enable remote monitoring and diagnostics in medical facilities, ensuring critical support reaches patients or staff in real-time.

Case Study: Enhancing Elevator Safety with WebRTC

Videoedge collaborated with a leading global elevator manufacturer to develop a next-generation emergency response system. The solution addressed all technical challenges and included:

• Operates seamlessly on low-powered hardware, a dual-core 900Mhz NXP IMX6 processor: This processor is responsible for the entire operation of the Elevator unit including its core Linux-based OS and the entire application layer built on top of the OS layer for smooth elevator operation. The mandate provided to us was to keep the CPU usage < 70% while running a crystal clear audio/video call along with all other elevator processes running. We were able to achieve the mandate while keeping the CPU usage at 62% while running a 2-way WebRTC-powered video call along with all other elevator processes.
• Provides crystal-clear video and audio streams for real-time communication: The goal was to achieve the best possible audio/ video quality while trying to keep the CPU utilization below 70%. With a lot of experimentation, we found, that 320X240 at 10fps is the sweet spot that provides a clear 2-way audio/video while keeping the overall CPU utilization at 62%.
• Meets rigorous safety and compliance standards: Rigorous testing was done on the actual production hardware under various scenarios to find out issues and fix them proactively.

The system significantly improved emergency response times and passenger safety, setting a new benchmark in the industry.

Conclusion

As elevator safety requirements evolve, real-time communication systems like those developed by Videoedge are becoming indispensable. Our WebRTC-based solutions not only enhance safety but also open new possibilities in industrial and automotive applications. If you are looking to transform your industrial 4.0 systems including safety systems, Videoedge can help you design a custom solution tailored to your unique needs.

Feel free to take a look at the Videoedge Video API/SDK to speed up your development process without having to build the entire application from scratch. With Videoedge SDK, you get the entire backend ready to be deployed into multiple geographies across the world within a week. With the backend readily available, we can help you with our custom native application development services for the development and integration of a native application. Here is a link to the list of services we provide for Embedded/IOT development/integration use cases for WebRTC. Feel free to drop us an email at hello@videoedge.io  for a free 30mins strategic discussion session, if you feel a discussion with us would be an important starting point. This session would be exclusively for diving deep into your requirements to provide you with the correct ingredients required to realize your requirements without time and cost overruns. You can reach out to us using this link as well.

References:

Here is a blog we wrote some time ago on how to compile and build the native Libwebrtc for a target CPU type of ARM, responsible for enabling 2-way video calling natively on a hardware device without a dependency on browsers.