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Michael D6 avatar image
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Michael D6 asked Michael D6 commented

Multi Robot Processor

Attached is a simple model with three robots pulling from a single queue and then dropping to a corresponding sink. It works, but the way I made it would be time consuming to scale. I would like to get some tips on how to set this up so that it could scale to 10, 20 or 100 robots without needing to copy and past each block and then select the robot and the queue. I thought about adding the robots to a resource, but then was not sure how to direct to the corresponding sink. Multi Robot Processor.fsm

FlexSim 21.2.2
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multi-robot-processor.fsm (51.8 KiB)
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Felix Möhlmann avatar image
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Felix Möhlmann answered Michael D6 commented

Here are two ways to make scaling the model easier:

1. As you mention, use the robots as a resource that gets acquired by each token. Easiest by adding the robots to a group and referencing that group in the "Resource". To link to the correct sink, I would suggest to use a centerport-connection. In the "Unload" activity you can reference the sink as 

token.robot.centerObjects[1]

"robot" was chosen as label name in the acquire activity. You could also use a pointer label but that would entail more worl than drawing a connection.

2. Use an instanced process flow. Each robot runs its own instance of the process flow. (They are displayed as one, but you can view individual instances by selecting a connected object and clicking on "Open PF View".) The robot can be referenced as "current" in each instance. Instead of the items acquiring the robots, the robots pull the items from a list, to which they were pushed in the "Send to Port" option of the queue.

Both options are demonstrated in this model (1-3 use option 1, 4-6 option 2):

multi-robot-processor_options.fsm


multi-robot-processor-options.fsm (81.1 KiB)
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Michael D6 avatar image Michael D6 commented ·
@Felix Möhlmann thank you. This is perfect
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