AGV item handover

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christoph gruber asked Sep 13, '19 christoph gruber answered Oct 17, '19

AGV item handover

I try to change one of my big Transportmodel with NetworkNodes and TrafficControls to a model which will use ProcessFlow-AGVmodule. I have some problems with pulling and sending items in the right way.

Model description:

In my small and simple demomodel I have two productionlines and one wastgenerationplace.

Material was generated on separated stations (each productionline has her own materialgenerator) and will be transported to four handovers. One handover is a conveyor with the capacity of 4 items, all other handovers have a capacity of 1. On the "send to port" of the handovers the items will be send to the list "ReadyToTransport_List". The queues in front of the productionlines are pulling the right items from the list "ReadyToTransport_List".

If the wastgenerationstation produced a full container, the full container have to transport to the Wast-Station, after delivering the same AGV have to take a emty box and bring it back to the wastgenerationstation. In front of the Wast-Station there is a controlarea, only one AGV can be there and all other AGVs has to wait if the place is occupied.

The queue behind the wastgenerationstation is special. I don´t use the "use Transport" flag on the Flowtab. Instead I write logic on the entrytrigger with the destination and I put the item on the predefined List "AGVWork".

For the double-cross of the wasthandling I have changed the AGVProcessFlow a little bit, look at WasteHandling in the ProcessFlow.

I try to use the same logic for the controlpoints like in the AGV-Tutorial.

Problems and Questions:

1. I don´t know why the waste (brown items) every time takes an extra circle with the AGV? I a other small demomodel with the same logic there is no problem. I think there is a problem with the NextLookForWork Controlpoints!? But I can´t find.

2. The Handovers: In my real model I need these queues to write some logic like waiting time for an item etc. But now in the demomodel it looks like the queues have a capacity of 2 instead of 1 or rather the conveyor have a capacity of 5 instead of 4! How can I handle this behavior?

Please help me to understand my problems in using the AGV-Module. Thanks a lot!

Enclosed you will find my model.

agv-first-step-gr-2.fsm

agv network

modelpicture.png (120.2 KiB)

agv-first-step-gr-2.fsm (149.6 KiB)

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Attachments: Up to 12 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 23.8 MiB each and 47.7 MiB total.

christoph gruber commented · Sep 13, 2019 at 07:37 PM

Problem 1 I solved, see the picture below.

But Question 2 is still alive!?

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wastehandling.png (62.9 KiB)

Answer 1 · 2019-10-16T07:31:00Z

christoph gruber answered Oct 16, '19

Thank you for your efforts, @Tanner Poulton

I tried a few things and found that deleting the activity as described above from @Benjamin W2 was wrong!

But nevertheless, the handover form a conveyor not work! So I put a queue infront of the conveyor and the model works fine. See the attaching model.agv-first-step-gr-3-v1922.fsm

agv-first-step-gr-3-v1922.fsm (151.7 KiB)

5 |100000

Attachments: Up to 12 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 23.8 MiB each and 47.7 MiB total.

Answer 2 · 2019-09-13T22:06:20Z

Benjamin W2 answered Sep 13, '19 Braydn T converted comment to answer Oct 17, '19

Hi @christoph gruber,

I was able to fix this problem by changing the connections from the main pickup point to "LookForWork" connections and deleting 2 activities in your process flow.

agvfirststep.fsm

lookforwork.png (81.0 KiB)

agv-process-flow.png (47.2 KiB)

agvfirststep.fsm (146.6 KiB)

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Attachments: Up to 12 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 23.8 MiB each and 47.7 MiB total.

christoph gruber commented · Sep 14, 2019 at 08:45 AM

Thanks @Benjamin W2

your description make work with the AGV-Module a little bit clearly for me.

But the model don´t work fine.

The conveyor handover wasn´t run into from the AGV´s! On the other hand, items from the conveyor suddenly appears in the queues (Queue_pull_1 / 2).

And after a while (runtime ca. 825) the AGV´s run extra cycles without items.

For a better animation to see the problem, I only change the color from the conveyor items to pink.

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conveyor-and-extracircles.jpg (64.8 KiB)

christoph gruber christoph gruber commented · Sep 25, 2019 at 08:44 PM

Please, can someone help me understand where the mistake is?

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tannerp christoph gruber commented · Oct 03, 2019 at 08:08 PM

Hi @christoph gruber,

I ran the model, but I don't know where the extra items may be coming from. Is there anything you may have changed? A list that is being pulled from?

Also, I think the AGVs appear to be performing empty cycles because they aren't instructed to park and make a clear path for the other AGV. Is there a time in your simulation you could direct them to park when not assigned a task?

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