Elevator system with speech synthesizer for audible information

Claim 1

An elevator system, comprising: a building having a plurality of floors, at least two elevator cars mounted for movement in said building to serve floors therein, control means for each of said elevator cars for providing status signals indicative of the operation of its associated elevator car, and communication means for providing audible, informative messages in each of said elevator cars in response to at least certain of their status signals, said communication means including a first unit common to all of the elevator cars, with said first unit including a central processor unit, memory means having a first location for storing a predetermined vocabulary common to all messages, and a second location for storing a series of instructions for each message, said communication means further including a plurality of similar second units, one for each elevator car, with each second unit including sound reproduction means, and a speech synthesizer, with each speech synthesizer having memory means for storing information received from the memory means of the first unit, said central processor unit being responsive to the control means of each of said elevator cars and operating in response to the status signals provided thereby to address the instructions in the second location of said memory means, as required by a specific status signal, and using these instructions to extract vocabulary information from the first location of said memory means and store it in the memory means of the speech synthesizer associated with the elevator car to receive the audible message, said central processor unit providing and maintaining sufficient vocabulary information in the memory means of each speech synthesizer such that audible messages may be simultaneously produced by the sound reproduction means of all of said elevator cars, when required, without interruption due to lack of vocabulary information.