System for detecting broken combplate teeth of an escalator
AssigneeOtis Elevator Company
InventorBruno Henrique Torres
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An escalator system is provided and includes a combplate including teeth, a moving step including grooves and being drivable to pass by the combplate at a step-combplate interface at which, when each tooth is correctly positioned, each tooth passes through a corresponding groove and a detection system. The detection system includes an emitter and receiver pair and is configured to determine whether a signal pattern, which is derived from communications of the emitter and receiver pair and which is partially reflective of conditions of the teeth, is indicative of at least one tooth being incorrectly positioned.
Claims20
An escalator system, comprising:
- a combplate comprising teeth;
- a moving step comprising grooves and being drivable to pass by the combplate at a step-combplate interface at which, when each tooth is correctly positioned, each tooth passes through a corresponding groove;
- and
- a detection system comprising an emitter and receiver pair and being configured to determine whether a signal pattern, which is derived from communications of the emitter and receiver pair and which is partially reflective of conditions of the teeth, is indicative of at least one tooth being incorrectly positioned.
An escalator system, comprising:
- a combplate comprising teeth;
- a moving step comprising grooves and being drivable to pass by the combplate at a step-combplate interface at which, when each tooth is correctly positioned, each tooth passes through a corresponding groove;
- and
- a detection system comprising an emitter and receiver pair and being configured to determine whether a signal pattern, which is derived from communications of the emitter and receiver pair and which is partially reflective of conditions of the teeth, is one of:
- a baseline signal pattern, which indicates that each tooth is correctly positioned, and
- a divergent signal pattern, which diverges from the baseline signal pattern and indicates that at least one tooth is incorrectly positioned.
A method of operating a detection system of an escalator system in which a moving step comprising grooves passes by a combplate at a step-combplate interface at which, when each tooth of the combplate is correctly positioned, each tooth passes through a corresponding groove, the method comprising:
- executing communications of an emitter and receiver pair;
- deriving a signal pattern from the communications of the emitter and receiver pair with the signal pattern being partially reflective of conditions of the teeth;
- and
- determining whether the signal pattern is one of:
- a baseline signal pattern, which indicates that each tooth is correctly positioned, and
- a divergent signal pattern, which diverges from the baseline signal pattern and indicates that at least one tooth is incorrectly positioned.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.