Schindler Transit Management Group Announces myPORT, a Totally New Way to Move Through the Built Environment

HONG KONG, Dec. 3, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Schindler Transit Management Group today unveiled a smartphone-based application known as myPORT which allows building owners much greater security and occupants much more freedom than ever before.

An occupant with the myPORT app installed can gain entry to the building by simply using their PIN code or Touch ID to unlock their phone and then showing it to a reader. What for them appears simple is actually an “e-banking level” of security as Schindler, in the background, uses a combination of timing, building topology and multiple data channels to undertake a 4-step security verification. Once in the building there is a very high degree of confidence that the owner of the smartphone has the right to be there. This means that doors can be opened, pre-programmed elevators ordered and life in general made much more convenient, all without removing the smartphone from your pocket.

myPORT provides a visitor control system that permits access to anyone with a smartphone regardless of whether they have the myPORT app installed or not. Anyone may be authorised to visit by being sent an SMS which the myPORT phone’s visitor feature generates using a simple form. When the visitor arrives at the building, they can click on an embedded link in the SMS and, if their visit is still valid, they will be sent a special video code which can be shown to the entry PORT in order to gain admission. The video code used is a Schindler invention which allows very quick access since the phone does not need to be held still, in a specific orientation or at a specific distance from the PORT camera which reads it.

myPORT can be used in conjunction with a PORT Technology visitor station such that any visitor in the lobby can have their image and voice sent directly to the myPORT phone of the person to be visited, regardless of whether they are in the building or not. So, for example, if an apartment dweller desires to give a visitor admission, a simple button in myPORT allows the outer door to be opened, an elevator to be assigned which is pre-programmed to the correct floor and, if required, the final apartment door to be unlocked.

myPORT removes the need for disabled people to learn the intricacies of a specific building’s control systems since their journey can be controlled from the smartphone  that they are already familiar with.  Schindler is working with the Independent Living Resource Center in San Francisco, an organisation whose mission is to ensure that people with disabilities are full social and economic partners, both within their families and in a fully accessible community. The goal is to ensure that myPORT’s features for the disabled are designed by those who will actually use them and will be as good as they can possibly be.

In day-to-day use myPORT promises to make people’s lives a lot more convenient and secure but the wider implications are much more significant as Dr. Paul Friedli, Schindler’s Head of Advanced Research and the father of PORT Technology, explains, “The combination of the PORT Technology and myPORT means that the traditional building configuration model of central core, floor plates and cladding which was originally defined by the need for elevator clusters, is no longer necessary. This realisation has led Schindler into a collaboration with the architectural community to understand the opportunities that will arise by removing these constraints as the next generation of urban environments are planned. These implications are many, very exciting and appear to offer the ability to solve a lot of the problems that the need for rapid urbanisation is currently causing in our cities.”