Agents in Commercial Facilities

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Zenna
Posts: 5
Joined: Friday 18 September, 2015 - 02:06

Agents in Commercial Facilities

Post by Zenna »

Good day

I am using Pedestrian Dynamics for a project, where I have to simulate a commercial store. I have 5 different agent profiles, but some of the agents do not exit the simulation. I have checked in the "Activity Routes", and all the different routes specify that the last activity is to 'Exit' the simulation, but the agents are stuck in the "Commercial Facility" that represents a shelve. Can any one please give me advice on the problem.

Thank you
Zen-Mari
marlies
Posts: 301
Joined: Monday 17 January, 2011 - 09:28

Re: Agents in Commercial Facilities

Post by marlies »

Hi Zen-Mari,

Is there any message in the error window or tracer window (to be found in menu Tools > Tracer and Tools > Error Monitor)? Maybe the agents cannot find a route to the exit.

It would be nice if you could attach your model, so we can easier check what's going wrong.

Kind Regards,

Marlies
Zenna
Posts: 5
Joined: Friday 18 September, 2015 - 02:06

Re: Agents in Commercial Facilities

Post by Zenna »

Hi Marlies,

There isn't any error messages when I run the simulation. The agents get stuck mostly in Shower Display 1 through to 12, as well as in New Arrivals 1 to 4. I have 'deconstructed' the model, to only use one customer segment at this stage, to try and figure out what might cause the problem. The model that I am attaching thus only has the one customer segment, but the same problem occurs in all the models.

Also, is there a way, that I can include all 7 days of the week in one simulation model, so that the agents for the different days arrive at the correct time in the simulation. At this stage I have 7 models for each day of the week.


Thank you
Zen-Mari
Attachments
Baki_Monday.mod
(531.69 KiB) Downloaded 283 times
marlies
Posts: 301
Joined: Monday 17 January, 2011 - 09:28

Re: Agents in Commercial Facilities

Post by marlies »

Hi Zen-Mari,

It looks as if the agents do not really reach their destination. This can happen when the destination location (so the x,y,z destination of the agent) is to close to an obstacle. In this case the activity locations that have these problems are quite small and therefore this problem will occur quite often for that locations. A solution is to use the Location Deviation of the activity locations. This setting can be found in the tab location. Location deviation means that a destination within a radius around the x,y,z destination is also fine. So, advice to set a value for e.g. 0.5 m in there.

It is possible to simulate 7 days using one model. I would suggest the following approach:
- Just copy the agent generator for the monday.
- Adjust the settings according your tuesday arrivals, then change the setting Delay time in the tab General of the agent generator to hr(24). So, the agents for that generator will get a delay of 24 hours.
- For wednesday set the delay to hr(48) and so on.

Regards, Marlies
Zenna
Posts: 5
Joined: Friday 18 September, 2015 - 02:06

Re: Agents in Commercial Facilities

Post by Zenna »

Hi Marlies,

It looks as if the agents do not get stuck in the commercial facilities anymore, thanks :) I have another question regarding agent generators. For each day, the amount of agents that arrive follow a certain distribution. The amount of agents that arrive follow another distribution depending on the hour. How can I simulate that the agents are spread out across the hour, during the day. The model that I currently have create all the agents within the first 5 minutes instead of spreading them out. I have tried in the agent generator to create a generator for Monday, and in the Arrival list the distribution for each hour during the day, but all the agents still arrive within the first hour.

Thank you
Zen-Mari
Attachments
Test.mod
(532.96 KiB) Downloaded 239 times
marlies
Posts: 301
Joined: Monday 17 January, 2011 - 09:28

Re: Agents in Commercial Facilities

Post by marlies »

Hi Zen-Mari,

What happens is the following:

- A row in the arrivallist of the agent generator has a Creation Time and a Number of Agents.
- The Creation Time is applied to all the agents for that row of the arrivallist. This creation time can be a random value, like the way you used a uniform distribution, but the generator will pick one value from that distribution and apply it to all the agents for that row.

You can easily change this to what (I guess) you wanted to achieve:

- Set the creation time to a fixed time like 0,3600,7200,10800 etc. This will define the list of number of agents per hour.
- Then in tab General use the setting Delay Time to apply a delay to each individual agent using Uniform(0,3600). So assume you specified 20 agents for the 2nd hour at time is 7200, the delay time will spread the actual arrival of the agents in the model over the 2nd hour by using the Delay Time.

I updated your model according to this method, see attached. I also changed the max number of agents in the General tab to unlimited.

Regards,

Marlies
Attachments
20150922_Test.mod
(533.67 KiB) Downloaded 330 times
Zenna
Posts: 5
Joined: Friday 18 September, 2015 - 02:06

Re: Agents in Commercial Facilities

Post by Zenna »

Hi Marlies,

Thank you for your help. I don't know how I would've managed without it! It looks (at this stage) as if the model has all the necessary features. :D

Thank you
Zen-Mari
Zenna
Posts: 5
Joined: Friday 18 September, 2015 - 02:06

Re: Agents in Commercial Facilities

Post by Zenna »

Hi Marlies

My model works, and all the agents are generated. However, sometimes when I run the model some of the agents just stand in the middle of the commercial facility. I also get an error: "PD error 1005: No route found between start location (52.493, -4.78) at layer 1 and goal location (30.851, 11.904) at layer 1 for agent 225920576". Why is this error caused? and how can I fix it? I have attached my final model also.

Thank you
Zen-Mari
Attachments
Model1.mod
(647.41 KiB) Downloaded 278 times
marlies
Posts: 301
Joined: Monday 17 January, 2011 - 09:28

Re: Agents in Commercial Facilities

Post by marlies »

Hi Zen-Mari,

I usually have the following approach to solve these kind of errors:

- Using the option Show Location in the menu Modeling >Show Location, it is possible to easily look up the exact locations that are mentioned in the error tracer.
- In this case it looks as if the destination location is really in the corner of one of the polygon shaped locations. There are several methods to work around it. For your model I suggest the following: in the location approaching of the polygon/triangular areas always send the agents to the centerpoint of the area instead of a random location by using:

Code: Select all

{**Absolute location (x, y, layer)**}
SetVector(xAbsLoc(c, PDEnvAtom), yAbsLoc(c, PDEnvAtom), HeightLayer_GetLayerID(up(up(c))))
By the way: this locations in the corner have been improved in the latest version of PD, but this is not yet available in the trial version.

Kind regards,

Marlies
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