Using elevators to transport TE's

Hi all.

I have a rather challenging problem. (In my scope anyways)

I am working on a model, where task executors (AGVs) move a lot of cargo around below a hopspital. The traffic mostly takes place on a single level, but in some cases, I need the AGV's to use elevators to move up to the floors above.

In one of my test models, the plan was to get the AGV to travel to a Queue by the elevator and, by sending a message to the Queue, get the Queue to move the AGV into itself. Then the Queue sent the AGV to the appropriate floor by elevator, and the AGV was unloaded in another Queue. The problem is, that if the model is reset while the AGV is in a Queue or Elevator, the AGV is destroyed along with all other flow items. Then there is the issue of Travel Networks. When the AGV is loaded onto an Elevator, it is removed from it's travel network as far as I can tell, and this presents yet another challenge.

In another test model, I used a Coordinated Task Sequence to get the AGV and Elevator to meet up and and load the AGV from the AGV's current Net Node, and then travel to the appropriate floor and unload the AGV to a Net Node there. This worked a bit better than the previous attempt, but it takes some very tricky Task Sequences which tend to make trouble when I work with 4 elevators, each with 6 floors.

Last time I had this problem, I ended up cheating by using a vertical travel network and a Traffic Control to simulate elevators. This time around, though, I would like to do it right.

Does anyone here have experience with using elevators to transport other TE's, and if so, would you care to share a few tips?

Any help would be heavily appreciated.
/Christian

Hello Christian,

you can bind your Taskexecuter with the kinematics node of the elevator.
If you update the kinematics in the draw trigger of the taskexecuter and perhaps another trigger e.g. Onmessage, the taskexecuter moves with the elevator.

It is very dirty in my opinion, but it looks good.

Jörg

TEonElevator.fsm

Thanks, Jörg.

How would you go about disconnecting the TE from the basement travel network and then attaching it to the network on the floors? I tried contextdragconnection() to do this, but it did not seem quite stable. I may need to experiment a bit more with that part.

I am looking forward to try tying this together with my dispatcher logic, which is based on analyzing remaining traveldistance in existing tasks and distance from end-of-previous-task to beginning-of-new-task.

Christian,

The command you are looking for is reassignnetnode()
Do not use it while the TE is currently executing a travel task.

reassignnetnode(te, NULL) once the elevator has loaded the TE

reassignnetnode(te, newNN) just before the elevator has unloaded the TE

Thanks, Kris.

I will give it a whirl tomorrow, and get back with my results. I will also post a model when I get it to work...