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Key Concepts

Welcome to LiftAuth! This guide will help you understand our terminology, sequence of events, and provide you with the necessary steps to integrate our system with your robots.

Terminology​

Robot​

A robot is an autonomous or semi-autonomous machine that interacts with the LiftAuth system to request and manage lift access. Each robot in your fleet must be configured to communicate with your fleet manager and LiftAuth servers.

Fleet Manager​

The fleet manager acts as the orchestrator for all lift-related operations. It communicates with both the robots and LiftAuth's API servers to ensure seamless coordination. The fleet manager is responsible for:

  • Authenticating with the LiftAuth API using an API token.
  • Managing requests and responses between robots and LiftAuth servers.
  • Enabling and disabling robot mode for exclusive lobby control.
  • Handling any error scenarios that arise during lift operations.

Lift Lobby​

A lift lobby refers to a collection of lifts that operate collaboratively within a building or facility. These lifts are coordinated to efficiently transport passengers between a shared set of floors, optimizing wait times and travel paths by working together as a unified system.

Cloud Websocket​

Cloud Websocket is an endpoint reachable on the internet for you to control a lift. This endpoint is used for controlling the lift when your robot has internet connection outside the lift. You can find the supported commands here

Cabin LAN and Cabin Websocket​

Cabin LAN is a wifi access point that is provisioned inside the lift. This allows the robot to locally control the lift while inside the cabin. This LAN is purely to connect to the Cabin Websocket. It does not have internet access.

Cabin Websocket is a websocket endpoint only available on Cabin LAN. It follows the similar set of commands as the Cloud Websocket here

Robot Mode​

Robot Mode is the state of the lobby where a lift is reserved exclusively for the use of a single robot. It guarantees that the robot's elevator journey from its initial floor to its target floor will not be interrupted by other passengers or even other robots. Usage of this mode is optional and it is not required to make use of the other APIs.

Robot mode reserves a specific lift for the robot and the robot can only use that lift. If enabled, robot mode will have to be disabled after the robot's journey is complete. There is also a timeout of 30 minutes, beyond which robot mode will be disabled automatically, so please ensure your operations complete within this timeframe.