Design of Non-Intrusive Online Monitoring System for Traction Elevators

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review of:

Design of non-intrusive online monitoring system for traction elevator

Summary

This paper presents the design of a pressure altimeter based on the STM32 main control chip integrated with a six-axis acceleration gyroscope sensor and barometric pressure sensor to perform edge computation, eliminating data loss during transmission. The approach includes temperature compensation, BP neural network training, and signal processing methods to enhance monitoring accuracy, culminating in verified effectiveness through scale model experiments.

Comments

The authors need to state clearly, both in the abstract and in the introduction, what the objective of the work is. Only in the final paragraph of the introduction (lines 109-110) the authors timidly state the objective of the paper without having presented a real justification:

"In this paper, a non-intrusive online height-integrated monitoring system for traction elevator based on NB-IoT (Narrow Band Internet of Things) and STM32 is designed."

Having discovered what could be the paper's aim, the development of a pressure altimeter with applications to elevator monitoring, the authors must describe the state of the art in the use of pressure altimeters with the same field of applications. An adequate review of the state of the art is necessary to judge its originality and technical merit on sufficient grounds.

On the other hand, if the main contribution of the work is focused on the design and construction of such a pressure altimeter, then to evaluate the developed system, it can be expected that, given its wireless communication capabilities, the tests should be performed in realistic scenarios within working elevators and not on the built scale model. Testing it in a real scenario provides an excellent basis to justify and evaluate the developed system.

The article also needs to describe the main problems that cause fatal accidents in elevators, as suggested in the abstract and introduction. Consequently, the equipment or components believed to be the leading causes of these incidents, which may have provided a valid reason for the work, should be examined.

Writing errors

The article contains numerous writing errors that suggest a need for more careful review. For example, there appears to be confusion between "altitude" and "attitude," as shown 31 times in the article (lines 289, 290, 292, 285, 231, 234, etc.).

Also, the figures are poorly elaborated. For example, Figure 4 (between lines 216 and 217) uses "Height" without distinction of usage. Similar problems are present in other figures (Figures 17 and 18, for example).

Some tables have also been carelessly prepared. For example, in Table 1 (between lines 228 and 229), column 1's heading reads "sports event," and columns three and four are titled "(statistics) standard deviation" and "variance (statistics)" with apparent redundancy.

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled applsci-2861829. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Furthermore, we would like to show the details as follows:

1. The authors need to state clearly, both in the abstract and in the introduction, what the objective of the work is. Only in the final paragraph of the introduction (lines 109-110) the authors timidly state the objective of the paper without having presented a real justification:

The author’s answer: we have revised the sentence in the article. The details as follows:
“The traditional elevator monitoring equipment adopts multi-sensor decentralized installation and layout, and the monitoring accuracy is low, which directly affects the effective alarm of the monitoring system; however, the existing on-line monitoring system cannot quickly alarm for faults.” Between lines 9 to 12

“In summary, the fault diagnosis system for traction elevators has been widely used and has achieved remarkable results. However, the previous research is based on the sensor to collect data and use the cloud server for fault diagnosis.” Between lines 106 and 108

2. "In this paper, a non-intrusive online height-integrated monitoring system for traction elevator based on NB-IoT (Narrow Band Internet of Things) and STM32 is designed."

Having discovered what could be the paper's aim, the development of a pressure altimeter with applications to elevator monitoring, the authors must describe the state of the art in the use of pressure altimeters with the same field of applications. An adequate review of the state of the art is necessary to judge its originality and technical merit on sufficient grounds.

The author’s answer: we have revised the sentence in the article. The details as follows:

“Nakanishi et al.[21] use the GPS system and pressure sensor to calibrate the height signal; Matyja et la.[22] use temperature and humidity to correct the pressure sensor.” Between lines 96 and 97

“if the use of other height monitoring techniques ( GPS, laser, radar ) is too expensive, it is rarely considered.” Between lines 101 and 102

3. On the other hand, if the main contribution of the work is focused on the design and construction of such a pressure altimeter, then to evaluate the developed system, it can be expected that, given its wireless communication capabilities, the tests should be performed in realistic scenarios within working elevators and not on the built scale model. Testing it in a real scenario provides an excellent basis to justify and evaluate the developed system.

The author’s answer: In order to test the wireless communication performance of the system, we completed some tests on the real elevator, and revised the data of experiments 6.3 and 6.4.

4. The article also needs to describe the main problems that cause fatal accidents in elevators, as suggested in the abstract and introduction. Consequently, the equipment or components believed to be the leading causes of these incidents, which may have provided a valid reason for the work, should be examined.

The author’s answer: we have revised the sentence in the article. The details as follows:

“Elevators may experience various failures during their everyday usage, such as component wear causing changes in the original precision of the parts, foreign objects obstructing elevator door components, and parts becoming loose due to external force impacts. There are many types of elevator failures, including elevator personnel entrapment accidents, elevator shearing accidents, elevator collision accidents, and elevator fall accidents. To prevent such mechanical failures, it is necessary to focus on monitoring data such as elevator door switches, elevator posture, and elevator height. This system specifically focuses on monitoring elevator posture data and elevator height data.” Between lines 140 and 147.

5. The article contains numerous writing errors that suggest a need for more careful review. For example, there appears to be confusion between "altitude" and "attitude," as shown 31 times in the article (lines 289, 290, 292, 285, 231, 234, etc.).

Also, the figures are poorly elaborated. For example, Figure 4 (between lines 216 and 217) uses "Height" without distinction of usage. Similar problems are present in other figures (Figures 17 and 18, for example).

Some tables have also been carelessly prepared. For example, in Table 1 (between lines 228 and 229), column 1's heading reads "sports event," and columns three and four are titled "(statistics) standard deviation" and "variance (statistics)" with apparent redundancy.

The author’s answer: Thank you for pointing this out. There may be some writing errors. In this paper, we use an acceleration sensor to monitor the posture data of the elevator, and use a pressure sensor to monitor the height data of the elevator, so consider rewriting ' attitude ' to ' posture '.

In addition, we modified Figure 4 and made a more detailed text description of Figure 17 and Figure 18, and modified the description in Table 1.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Electric elevator drives rarely lead to dangerous situations. 

The cases of death from falling elevators that I know of occurred for other reasons. (for example, the floor of cabine fell off).

These defects are unpredictable. 

However, using vibration data, it is possible to predict failures of any electric drive and gear.

 

To improve this paper:

1. please improve the Introduction - there is no need for continuous monitoring and data transfer. This has little effect on the overall reliability of the elevator. 

Emergency situations should be processed by the local control system - and periodic sending of data to the server should not overload the network with data.

2. please correct "peak and peak" to "peak-to-peak" (page 2, line 56)

3. please improve wrong ISO versions. version ISO 7919.5-2005 was withdrawn - please use ISO 20816-5:2018 (page 2, line 56-57)

4. (chapter 5.1 line 451-460) There is no meaning of the exchange protocol - this is trivial information. Not interesting for any readers. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Dear reviewer

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled applsci-2861829. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Furthermore, we would like to show the details as follows:

1. please improve the Introduction - there is no need for continuous monitoring and data transfer. This has little effect on the overall reliability of the elevator. 

Emergency situations should be processed by the local control system - and periodic sending of data to the server should not overload the network with data.

The author’s answer: It is really true as Reviewer suggested that we ignore this part of the information in the relevant description. In view of this situation, the summary is modified.

“With the increase of elevator usage, more and more elevator real-time monitoring equipment is applied to the operation of elevators. The traditional elevator monitoring equipment adopts multi-sensor decentralized installation and layout, and the monitoring accuracy is low, which directly affects the effective alarm of the monitoring system; however, the existing on-line monitoring system cannot quickly alarm for faults.” Between lines 8 and 12.

2. please correct "peak and peak" to "peak-to-peak" (page 2, line 56)

The author’s answer: We are very sorry for our incorrect writing, it has been corrected in line 52.

3. please improve wrong ISO versions. version ISO 7919.5-2005 was withdrawn - please use ISO 20816-5:2018 (page 2, line 56-57)

The author’s answer: Considering the Reviewer’s suggestion, we have change ISO versions to the latest version in line 54.

4. (chapter 5.1 line 451-460) There is no meaning of the exchange protocol - this is trivial information. Not interesting for any readers. 

The author’s answer: Thank you for pointing out this part of the error, has deleted the relevant content.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have carefully revised and corrected the observations made in the previous version of the article.

 

Author Response

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled applsci-2861829. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Furthermore, we would like to show the details as follows:

1. In Figure 2, the sensor and the STM32 system will generate data transmission, and the data transmission will also be generated between the nbiot module and the STM32 system, so the inappropriate part is modified.
2. The label of some resistance elements in Fig. 3 is repeated, which is modified.
3. The inappropriate part of Fig.14 is modified.
4. In Figure 9, the y-axis has been changed to the log-scale, which will show the image more clearly.

Special thanks to you for your good omments.

We hope our revised manuscript could enable publication in the Applied Sciences

Sincerely Yours,

Zhixing Li

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Some additional comments

1. fig. 2/fig. 3/ fig. 14 - looks same "before" and "after" revision. what is the changes?

2. fig.14 - the square "Device Error" touches the rhombus "Device completes ....?" - no changes before and after revising this figure.

3. fig. 9 - maybe better to use log-scale for Y-axis

Author Response

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled applsci-2861829. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Furthermore, we would like to show the details as follows:

1. In Figure 2, the sensor and the STM32 system will generate data transmission, and the data transmission will also be generated between the nbiot module and the STM32 system, so the inappropriate part is modified.
2. The label of some resistance elements in Fig. 3 is repeated, which is modified.
3. The inappropriate part of Fig.14 is modified.
4. In Figure 9, the y-axis has been changed to the log-scale, which will show the image more clearly.

Special thanks to you for your good omments.

We hope our revised manuscript could enable publication in the Applied Sciences

Sincerely Yours,

Zhixing Li