London Engineer Develops Curved Escalator

Pretty cool idea.

I expect by later today someone will have incorporated the picture of it into a version of M. C. Escher's 'Relativity'.

Mitsubishi have been making and selling them for years. Scroll down to Asia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalator#Notable_spiral_escalator_installations

Actually, the short excerpt fails to capture what is probably the most innovative aspect of this invention, as stated in the full article :

"...a continuous loop of curved steps, which can follow any path upwards, flatten and straighten, and descend again with passengers onboard.

This marks a departure from traditional escalator design where redundant steps move underneath those in use.

'There are two issues here: it is a terrible waste of steps and maintenance is a nightmare,' said Levy. 'The Levytator is designed so that all the maintenance can be done from the top, so it is very much easier. Also, because it's in a loop, the cost per useable step is much less than in a conventional escalator – you get twice the steps for your money.'"

Does sound like a good idea to me !

I would be curious to see the design of those "two way" steps. Obviously, a patent search could possibly come up with prior art on the "round robin" aspect.

Have not checked for prior art but the actual patent does offer a nice description :

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4434884.pdf

That is unless this patent is the prior art itself (1984)...

Still looks like a good idea !

I don't think that is the patent. that is similar to the other curved escalators that were linked to previously. the basic idea for those is the pattern of a circular staircase.

What we are looking for is something that can move along ANY curve or straight line while on an inclined plane. Inherent in this is the ability to accomodate any pitch. I think we are looking for technolgoy that is going to work like a chain in 2 axes, and is limited in the other z axis (attached to next-in-line)