Robotics Club Presentation

Community

Communities are groups of people who share an environment which can be physical or when people are in similar circumstances around the world.Communities also often have rules or regulations to follow.There is also such a thing as an internet community which is when people go on the internet and interact with people who are sometimes on the opposite side of the world. This can be very dangerous when people (especially children) agree to meet other unknown people on the internet, (for example, they might say they are an 11 year old girl when actually they're an 88 year old man).

As a small community we (the Balmoral Robo Clan) try to do our part to help the team, which involves doing as much as we can to make our group successful. In other communities people might be expected to do more or less but everyone has a limit!

We decided to focus on helping Saint Lukes because they are part of our community and they also have plenty of escalators so we thought that they might like some help.

Escalators and travelator

Escalators and travelators are similar but not the same! OK we admit that they are both moving walkways of a kind but the big difference is that Escalators are moving stairs and Travelators are flat moving walkways.

Escalators are called escalators because it is a blend of two words: Elevator (which means lifting) and scala (which means stairs).

Also, Travelators where designed by Gabriel Bouladon and Paul Zuppiger from the Battelle Memorial Institute Switzerland.The first travelator was made in Paris in 2002. The Speed of the travelator started at 12 km/h and they had rollers at either end to speed you up to the right speed or slow you down. They discovered that People kept falling over and slowed it down to 9 km/h (without rollers). Since then many travelators have been made in lots of different parts of the world and you can now see them in most shopping centers and airports. High speed Escalators and Travelators were known to be dangerous when getting on and of so staff used to determine whether you could get on and of safely, otherwise you would have to use the walkway near by

Did you know that Park Pobedy in the Moscow metro has the longest individual Escalator in the world at 120 meters?

Escalators are very dangerous when it comes to lose shoe laces because the shoe laces can get caught in the cracks and then damage your foot! Also about 30 people got injured and 8 people died when an escalator collapsed at Moscow metro in 1982 on the 17th of February.

This comes to show that Escalators are more dangerous than they look!

Our Problem

After a bit of debate, we decided that our problem would be that escalators/travelators use way too much power while they are running.

Our Solutions

Option No.1

High Cost: Solar Panels The first idea we came up with was, in short, to supply solar panels.We worked out that if we have 1m2 of solar panels we can generate 25-50w's of power. Then came the hard bit. Escalators use 14,000kwh of power each year, running 12 hours a day.

If we divide that by 365 we get 38.35kw per 12 hours, which we rounded to 40kw, or 40,000w.We then got our 50w of power (from one solar panel) and multiplied that by 800 to get 40,000 (again!). That equation shows that we would need 800m2 of solar panels!!! This would be a little impractical. We think St. Lukes should install solar panels for their power needs but the solar panels will not provide all of the electricity needed.

Option No.2

Medium cost: Optical Sensors This would save quite a lot of power.The main idea being that the escalator is off until it senses a person approach it,with which it turns on and carries the person up or down. This will work by installing infrared or ultrasonic sensors that sense the person coming and turn the escalator until the sensors at the bottom/top sense the person again (approximately 20 seconds per ride for the escalators in St Lukes).

Option No.3

Low Cost: Stairs Having no escalators would save the most amount of power. We would suggest St Lukes replaces at least two of their escalators with ramps and stairs. it is only a 2 storey building so there would not be too many stairs or too long a ramp to climb.

Option No.4

Medium Cost: Gym Bikes There is a gym in St Lukes. We could generate a little bit of power by hooking up the escalators to the gym bikes and treadmills. This would only produce 200watt hours by a reasonably fit person but it would reduce, however slightly, the total power cost.

In conclusion, we think that St Lukes should use a combination of all four solutions and maybe think up some of their own!

References:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/escalator1.htm

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_comunity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community