roboflo 0.2.1

Scheduler for automation tasks that involve multiple stations/workers.

pip install roboflo

Task scheduler for any system with coordinated workers. The original use case is for the Perovskite Automated Spin-Coating Assembly Line (PASCAL) in the Fenning Lab at UC San Diego, where a robotic arm moves small glass slides between stations to perform experiments.

roboflo assumes that you have a set of Worker's that act (independently or in unison) to perform Task's of set duration. Furthermore, one or more Worker's can function to transition between Task's (eg my robot moves a sample from the hotplate to a camera, or my mom moves me from school to soccer practice). These transition moves constitute a special case of Task's , called Transition's. The total set of Worker's and Transition's define your System. Sets of Task's are consolidated into Protocol's (eg the same process for five samples or five kids), which are then scheduled (using the Scheduler on your System) to minimize the total working time. An example schedule is shown below.

Happy robot-ing!

PS - shoutout to Taskpacker, from which I drew heavy inspiration. roboflo carries much of the design philosophy from Taskpacker, but uses only Python packages (the backend is Google ORTools as opposed to Numberjack, which can be difficult to install especially on Windows). roboflo also introduces Transitions, which define a finite state machine, as a critical component in the workflow under the assumption that many robotic platforms involve workers whose specific jobs are to move things between other workers.