Escalators that detect footfall?

 

I’m watching a modern mainland Chinese drama on YouTube that was aired on Chinese TV in 2015.  There’s a scene involving taking the restaurant chef to the hospital for his skin allergy.  I see that the escalators carry on moving even when there’s no one around.

    This makes me think:  why not design them (escalators anywhere, not just in hospitals and not just in China) so that they only start moving when people approach or step onto the lowest step, rather like ceiling lights that go off after x seconds when there’s no movement in the room?

    This should save some energy (and therefore bills as well, so it’s economical, not just ecological).  I think there’s an escalator at a London Underground station (Liverpool Street?) that already does this:  I thought it’d only started to move as I stepped onto it a fortnight ago when I was there.

    Smoke detectors work on the same principle (springing into action when there's something alien or different in the air, in this case “smoke”), and they’ve been around for a while.

    Automatic doors that slide open or revolving doors that start to go round (in shops, supermarkets, hotels and office blocks, just to name four off the top of my head) at the approach of a human being have been around for decades, so why not escalators in the 21st century?

   

    My nearest Tube station, Manor House on the Piccadilly line in Zone 2 in north London, does not consistently have that many people throughout the day.

    The London Underground Tube system is so vast there must be loads of other stations (outside central London / Zone 1, or even Zone 2) that have very slack footfall stretches outside peak time.

    I was once in conference with someone in a classroom at the university, in the late 90s.  As we were just sitting there, discussing the text for translation, not moving at all, the lights would go off after a certain duration.  We had to start waving our arms about to set off the movement detectors.

    So, why not escalators in the 21st century when even AI (artificial intelligence) is so advanced?

(2025)

The repair man (China)

 

When China first re-opened up to the outside world in the 80s, foreign companies or businessmen couldn’t just rent a space for the office, or rent accommodation outside among the local populace for the employee(s), not even a separate self-contained flat (not that they were actually available at all, anyway).  They had to get a hotel suite, with one room as the office, one as the living area.

    I heard this story in 1984 about a white British businessman who could speak Chinese (rare in those days), stationed in one of these hotel suite set-ups.

    One day, a repair man turned up at his door.  Assuming that the white man couldn’t speak Chinese, the Chinese worker pointed at the ceiling light in the office space, indicating that he’d come to fix it.

    The Brit thought, “That’s strange, I didn’t know there was anything wrong with it,” but let the man go ahead all the same.  He retired to the other room, to get out of the man’s way.

    The repair man duly climbed up his ladder, got his tools out, and fiddled around with the ceiling light.  

    When he saw that the foreigner was safely in the other room, out of visual range, he tapped on the ceiling light fixture, and said, “喂，喂，听得到吗，听得到吗 / wéi, wéi, tīng-de-dào ma, tīng-de-dào ma / hello, hello, can you hear me, can you hear me?”

(Beijing, China, first half of the 80s)