SVU-International Journal of Engineering Sciences and Applications (2022) 3(2): 80-86

Print ISSN 2785-9967 | Online ISSN 2735-4571

DOI 10.21608/svusrc.2022.149091.1057

Design and Implementation of a Prototype of Elevator Control System:

Experimental Work

Abdel-Nasser Sharkawy 1, ฀, Gamal Tag Abdel-Jaber1

(Abdel-Nasser Sharkawy, 0000-0001-9733-221X)

Abstract Elevator is very important in the real life, and it the people or the goods to the desired floor or level.
is considered as an interesting and wonderful means of The main components of the elevator are the Car, the
transportation. This paper designs and implements a hoistway, the drive system, the control system, and the
prototype of an elevator control system. The mechanical safety system. The main objectives of the elevator control
design of this prototype is presented, where the dimensions, system are bringing the elevator’s car to the desired floor,
sizes, weights, calculations, and analysis of each part are minimizing the time of travel, and ensuring the safe speed
considered. Based on some calculations, the servo motor of limit for travel. Most of previous researchers used the
type MG996R High Torque Metal Gear Dual Ball Bearing programmable logic controller (PLC) to control their
is selected to operate the elevator’s prototype. The control developed elevator as in ref. [1]–[4], and few of them
circuit for the developed elevator is designed using the proposed the microcontroller or Arduino as in [5], [6]. Yang
Arduino Uno as the main controller and the 4x4 Matrix et al. [1] used PLC as a controller and a parallel connection
Membrane Keypad to be the component for human dispatching rule depending on the minimum waiting time
interface. An experimental work is investigated with the for running two elevators in parallel. In their approach, LC
elevator’s prototype using different loads (0.3 kg, 1.0 kg, series AC contactors were used, and PLC was programmed
and 2.5 kg) to check and investigate its effectiveness. The based on the ladder diagram. The type of their used motor
results show that the performance of the developed elevator was not stated. In [2], PLC was used to control an elevator,
is good and satisfactory whether in the upward or and programmed by ladder diagram. They used the DC
downward movements. motor for the elevator’s operation, and H-bridge for
changing the motor’s direction. Also, S7-300 PLC was used
Keywords: Elevator; Mechanical Design, Arduino Based in [3] to be the elevator’s control system. Balug and his
Controller; Servo Motor; Experiments group [6] proposed methods to regulate the speed and
position of the cabin of the elevator, for traffic control’s
purposes. They used the DC motor and H-bridge and the
1 Introduction control circuit used Arduino Pro Mini board. In [5], an
elevator based on Arduino Uno controller, was constructed.
Elevators are very important in our life because their For the operation of the elevator, the stepper motor was
applications and usage are every day for moving the goods used. In [7], an elevator group control system was designed.
or the peoples vertically in the high buildings e.g., the The passenger-based viewpoint was proposed for providing
shopping centers, the working offices, hotels, hospitals, and more information so as to make good elevators’ schedules.
so on. In addition, they shorten the time required to move In this paper, a prototype of an elevator control system is

Received: 4 July 2022/ Accepted: 21 July 2022

฀ Corresponding Author: Abdel-Nasser Sharkawy, E-mail:
[email protected]
1 Mechanical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, South
Valley University, Qena 83523, Egypt
 81 Sharkawy and Abdel-Jaber

developed. The mechanical design of this prototype is (width), 30 cm (depth), and 120 cm (height).
carried out using SOLIDWORK’s software and then it is 3) The counterweight is given by the following equation
implemented in reality. In this work, we do not follow the and by selecting the car empty weight to be 3.0 kg,
traditional idea using the DC motor which needs a
component to change the motion’s direction and the floor’s Counterweight = car empty weight +1/2 rated load
sensor to send the feedback’s signals. Instead of that, the = 3 𝑘𝑘𝑔𝑔 + 0.5 × 0.5 = 3.25 𝑘𝑘𝑔𝑔 (1)
servo motor which has the feedback is used for operating
the elevator’s prototype. The control circuit of the elevator The prototype is designed using SOLIDWORK’s
is designed using the Arduino Uno as the main controller software and it is implemented in reality in the
which is simple and easy to be used and programmed. The Mechatronics laboratory, Faculty of Engineering, South
elevator prototype is investigated and checked by doing Valley university in Egypt. The design of this prototype is
some experiments with different loads. shown in Fig. 1. The parts found in the upper part of the
The rest of the paper is composed of the following elevator such as the servo motor and the used pulleys are
sections. Section 2 presents the mechanical design of the presented in Fig. 2.
elevator and the selection of the used servo motor. In
section 3, the controller circuit and its components are
showed and discussed. Section 4 illustrates some
experiments performed with the elevator to check its
effectiveness. Finally, section 5 summarizes the main
important points in this paper and gives some future work.

2 Mechanical Design

This section presents the details about the performed

calculations and the mechanical design of the elevator’s
prototype that simulates the real one. In addition, the
selection of the used servo motor is presented.

2.1 Prototype’s Design

The designed prototype is composed of three levels or Fig. 1 The implemented design of the prototype of the elevator.
floors: the ground, the first, and the second floors. The
wood is selected to be the material of the proposed elevator
because it is cheap compared with other materials such as
Aluminum or steel. In addition, the wood has the light
weight and is easy to use. The dimensions of the elevator
are selected to be as follows: the height is 120 cm and the
wide is 30 cm. The height of every floor is 30 cm and the
remaining 30 cm is used to fix the motor, pulleys, Arduino
unit, and the other parts. Two shafts from irons are used and
put on both sides of the car to assure the well fixing and to
help the car moving upward and downward smoothly. At
the back of the car, a slot is done for the Counterweight to
make a balance with the load of the car and its contents. The
dimensions of the car and the well and the calculations for
the counterweight are obtained as follows: Fig. 2 The components found in the upper part of the elevator such
1) The dimensions of the car are selected to be as 26 cm as motor, pulleys, and Arduino unit.
(width), 26 cm (depth), and 30 cm (height).
2) The dimensions of the well are selected to be as 30 cm 2.2 Servo Motor Selection
Design and Implementation of a Prototype of Elevator Control System: Experimental Work 82

As presented from Fig. 2, the motor is coupled to the car 3 The Control System
by the use of the belt system for ensuring the upward and
downward movement for servicing the floor request. In this section, the discussion of using the controller for
Coupling is done by a belt drive mechanism. The the elevator’s work, the type of the used controller, the
calculations that are the basis for selecting the motor are matrix membrane keypad, and the design of the control
presented by the following equations. circuit are presented.
1) The motor torque is given by 3.1 Elevator’ Work Based on The Controller
Force = 𝑚𝑚 × 𝑔𝑔 = 8 kg × 9.81 = 78.5 N (2)
The elevator’s work based on the control system is
Torque (𝑇𝑇) = Force × radius of pulley = 78.5 × 3 𝑐𝑐𝑚𝑚 = presented in Fig. 4. In this figure, the input sends signals to
235.5 𝑁𝑁𝑐𝑐𝑚𝑚 ≈ 2.4 𝑁𝑁𝑚𝑚 (3) the controller which processes these signals and determines
the required action. The taken action by the controller
2) The angular speed in 𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟/𝑠𝑠 is assumed to be
depends on the command issues at the input and the input
2𝜋𝜋×250 signal that received from the motor and car e.g., the
𝜔𝜔 = = 26.167 𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟/𝑠𝑠 (4)
60
information about the car level or floor and the position and
3) Therefore, the power 𝑃𝑃 of the motor is calculated by speed of the motor. Therefore, all the logic operations are
performed by the controller to enable up and down elevator
𝑃𝑃 = 𝑇𝑇 × 𝜔𝜔 = 2.4 × 26.167 = 62.8 𝑤𝑤𝑟𝑟𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤 = 0.08 ℎ𝑝𝑝 (5) motion and to determine the priorities in servicing the
Based on these calculations, the servo motor of type requests. The input refers to the sent data to the controller
MG996R High Torque Metal Gear Dual Ball Bearing [8] is through an issued command from a particular component
selected. This motor is shown in Fig. 3 and its technical device. In this case, the sent commands to the controller are
specifications are presented in Table 1. from push buttons as described in Fig. 5.

Fig. 3 The used servo motor of type MG996R High Torque Metal
Gear Dual Ball Bearing [8].

Table 1 The technical specifications of the used servo motor in

the presented work. Fig. 4 The work of the elevator’s prototype based on the controller.
Parameter Value
Weight 55 g
Dimension 40.7 x 19.7 x 42.9 mm approx.
Stall torque 9.4 kgf·cm (4.8 V), 11 kgf·cm (6 V)
Operating speed 0.17 s/60º (4.8 V), 0.14 s/60º (6 V)
Operating voltage 4.8 V a 7.2 V
Running Current 500 mA – 900 mA (6V)
Stall Current 2.5 A (6V)
Dead band width 5 μs
Stable and shock proof double ball bearing design
Temperature range 0 ºC –55 ºC Fig. 5 The used push buttons to send commands to the controller.
 83 Sharkawy and Abdel-Jaber

3.2 Arduino Based Controller adhesive backing gives the simple way to mount the keypad
in various applications. This keypad uses a combination of
The controller is the responsible for coordinating all four rows and four columns for providing the button states
aspects of elevator service such as travel, speed, to the host device, typically the microcontroller.
accelerating, decelerating, door opening speed, and delay Underneath each key is a pushbutton; one end is connected
and levelling. The used controller in the presented work is to one row and the other end connected to one column.
Arduino Uno. Arduino Uno [9], [10] is a microcontroller These connections with the keypad are presented in Fig. 7.
board based on the ATmega328. It has the following
components:
 14 digital input/output pins and 6 of them can be used
as PWM outputs.
 6 analog inputs.
 A 16 MHz crystal oscillator.
 A USB connection.
 A power jack.
 An ICSP header.
 A reset button.
Arduino Uno contains everything needed to support the
microcontroller; simply connect it to a computer with a
USB cable or power it with an AC-to-DC adapter or battery
to get started. The Uno differs from all preceding boards in
that it does not use the FTDI USB-to-serial driver chip. Fig. 7 The 4x4 matrix membrane keypad with its connections, [11],
Instead, it features the Atmega8U2 programmed as a USB- [12].
to-serial converter. Uno means one in Italian and is named
3.4 The Control Circuit Design
to mark the upcoming release of Arduino 1.0. The Uno and
version 1.0 will be the reference versions of Arduino,
The components such as the Arduino Uno, the servo
moving forward. The Uno is the latest in a series of USB
motor, and the matrix keypad are connected together to
Arduino boards, and the reference model for the Arduino
compose the control circuit of the elevator. This circuit is
platform, for a comparison with previous versions. This
presented in Fig. 8.
type of controller is shown in Fig. 6.
The used servo motor gives a continuous rotational
motion and does not give an incremental or stepper motion.
To solve this problem, we design a flowchart diagram for
the system. In addition, the Arduino Uno is programmed
considering some values and symbols to determine each
floor in which the car and the motor should be stopped.
Figure 9 presents the flowchart diagram describing the
design of the control logic involved in the elevator’s
operation. The elevator starts operating when the power is
switched on. Under no use, the lift rests at the last floor
serviced (last destination floor). The elevator keeps
checking for the requests during the waiting to ensure fast
serving of any request on any floor. The car moves on each
Fig. 6 The Arduino Uno. This picture is taken from ref. [9], [10]. level and keeps checking for requests and destinations in
the direction, e.g., upward, or downward, depending on the
3.3 4x4 Matrix Membrane Keypad direction of travel and motion. The elevator’s car keeps
checking the last and ground floor to ensure reverse of
This keypad has 16 buttons, and it provides a useful directions on those floors since they represent the highest
component for microcontroller’s projects which it is used and the lowest floors according to the design scope. Indeed,
to send commands to the controller. The convenient this prove the safety.
Design and Implementation of a Prototype of Elevator Control System: Experimental Work 84

Fig. 8 The designed control circuit of the elevator’s prototype.

Fig. 9 The flowchart diagram describing the design of the control logic involved in the elevator’s operation. b1, b2, and b3 are the buttons.

the designed prototype of the elevator control system. The

servo motor is checked by connecting a plastic bottle to it
The experimental work with the designed elevator via the belt and it is working very well. Three experiments
control system is described in the next section. are executed by the elevator: the first one is using a load
of 0.3 kg, the second experiment is using a load of 1.0 kg,
4. Experiments and the third one is using a load of 2.5 kg. From these
experiments, we deduce that the elevator can lift the
In this section, some experiments are carried out with weight of 0.3 kg and 1.0 kg efficiently. In the case of the
 85 Sharkawy and Abdel-Jaber

load of 2.5 kg, the designed elevator works but with some more than 5 floors, where there are more conditions
difficulties. Although the elevator is designed to lift a load to test, calculate, and analysis.
of 5.0 kg, the maximum weight that it lifts is 2.5 kg. This 2) The presented work is serving as First Come First
is actually because that the frictions between the Serve method (FCFS algorithm), and there could be
elevator’s parts are not considered in the previous a clever way of serving such as CPU scheduling
calculations that presented in subsection 2.2 that are used algorithms. This point should be considered and
for the motor selection. Figure 10 represents the car of the investigated in the future work.
elevator in the three floors during the experiments. A 3) The requesting methods can be implemented using
video illustrating some experiments is available at the SMS remote request service or wireless requesting
following link: using the internet for the VIP or special cases.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5TCJJk7vJo 4) The doors can be designed to automatically open to
be more flexible.

Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank the following
Engineers, graduated in 2022 from Mechanical
Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, South
Valley University, for helping in the experimental work
executed in the paper.
1) Gamal Abd El-Nasser Fawaz
2) Mostafa Kamel Sayed
3) Hamdy Halfawy Mohamed
4) Abdel Tawab Noureddine Abdel Razek
5) Amr Abu Bakr Ahmed
Fig. 10 Some snapshots from the experiments with the designed
elevator control system during the upward and downward
Conflict of interest: The authors state that there is no
movements.
conflict of interest.

5. Conclusion and Future Works Funding Acknowledgements: The authors declare that
no financial support has been received for this manuscript.
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implemented. The mechanical design including the
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