- Start on the 1st floor.
- determine whether the call was an up call or a down call
- 2.a.)Down call: Bring yourself to the floor you were called to, if you receive a down call to a further floor during your trip go to the highest floor first. Bring all collected passengers down to their indicated floor. On the way down if you get a call, collect the passengers that are contained within you current trip. If they are not contained within your trip they will have to wait for the next trip. Situational: While going up if you receive an up call within the floors of this down trip collect the passengers but only if their trip fits in the current one.
- 2.b.)Up call: Bring yourself to the floor you are called to collect your passengers and take them where they want to go. If you receive a call to a floor you haven’t passed, collect the passengers and take them where they need to go. If you have passed their floor they will have to wait for the next up trip. Situational: If you receive a down call within an up trip wait until you have reached the peak of the up trip then go to the highest floor called for first then go down.
- Return to the 1st floor to reset the trip.
I wrote this thinking the elevator was sentient, I thought this because during class Professor Hodges said this elevator just had no idea how to do its job. This added personality to the elevator and in my head it is a living elevator. If the directions need to be more like a computer coding and direct let me know!
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
I like the Note, PlaneFan. To be honest, we can’t say for sure whether the elevator is sentient. There’s not much it needs to “know” to follow instructions, and unlikely it will need to know it knows, so the question may be irrelevant. 🙂 But let’s see how it plays out given the instructions you’ve written.
Start on the 1st floor. Determine whether the call was an up call or a down call.
—This is fine, but more useful to the author of the instructions than to the elevator. MAYBE, though, if the elevator were instructed to return to the first floor after any specified period of inactivity, it would make good sense to begin all instructions with the elevator at “home base.”
2.a.) Down call: Bring yourself to the floor you were called to, if you receive a down call to a further floor during your trip go to the highest floor first.
—You’ve written a type of run-on known as the “comma splice” here, PlaneFan. The instructions will be clearer as two sentences, so:
Bring yourself to the floor you were called to.
If you receive a down call to [an additional] floor during your trip, go to the highest floor first.
With those changes, I like this instruction very much.
Bring all collected passengers down to their indicated floor. On the way down, if you get a call, collect the passengers that are contained within your current trip. If they are not contained within your trip they will have to wait for the next trip.
—You haven’t said to open the doors. Those “contained passengers” are going to remain contained.
—I’m unclear what it means to say passengers are “contained within your trip.”
—I see why you asked about sentience, but the elevator doesn’t need any instructions to care or not care whether “prospective passengers” have to wait.
Situational: While going up, if you receive an up call within the floors of this down trip, collect the passengers but only if their trip fits in the current one.
—This sounds contradictory. Are you describing a “going up” trip or a “this down trip” trip?
—Also, what does “fits in the current one” mean?
—We should note that a CALL button, up or down, doesn’t indicate the desired destination floor, so the elevator, even a sentient one, wouldn’t know whether the prospective passenger wanted to go up one floor or all the way to the top. Does that shape whether the trip “fits” within the trip?
That should help (if you call that HELP!) revise your second set of instructions, too. Don’t forget to blend in some instructions for answering the Floor Buttons inside the elevator. And to open the doors.
Provisionally graded.
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When I say fits in the trip or contained in the trip I mean the extra call is from a floor between the floor you are on and the one you are going to. Ex. I am an elevator and I am on the first floor I get a call on the 20th floor. During my trip up I receive an up call on floor 9 to floor 17.
I assumed the elevator was sentient but just bad at its job. During class I actually had an entire background for this sad elevator. In my senario it knew it had to let the people in and out but the inner workings of collecting people in a timely matter was confusing to it. Usually the elevator would know very shortly what floor the passenger would go to but I didn’t think about the fact the person would already be in the elevator.
I will take some time to revise my steps. Thank you!