HAL 5 for ABB, KUKA, and Universal Robots

Announcing the release of the new version of the HAL Robot Programming & Control plugin for Grasshopper.

HAL 5, compatible with Rhino 4 and 5 and 0.9x or above Grasshopper versions, is proposing an extremely versatile set of tools (+600 functionalities, subdivided in 154 components), offering you the possibility to simulate, program and monitor ABB, KUKA, and Universal Robots machines*.

This version is proposing a new highly flexible workflow based on toolpath objects, allowing you to use all the powerful tools that HAL embeds independent from the complex robot process. It is then possible to combine, edit, and organize complex operations on massive amounts of objects with only a few clicks, while keeping a clean and lossless structure of machine movements. These new objects also generate an advanced and customizable representation of the robot process, including the target orientations, approximation zones, interpolation attributes, position names, Digital Output values and channels, mechanical tools simulation and parts manipulation, stocks of material preview, etc.

With HAL 5, it is also possible to optimize the size of your programs by choosing the declaration syntax used in the post-processor in ABB RAPID, KUKA KRL, and Universal Robots URSCRIPT. Advanced programming and IO management functionalities have also been translated in these three languages so you can switch from a language to another by a simple right-click on any component.

In addition to these new global updates, some advanced functionalities have been added or improved for ABB robots: The HAL to ABB Controller component, allowing for program uploading. Realtime control and data streaming have been entirely redesigned to reach a minimal communication latency (approx. 30ms) and have new multithreaded monitoring features to analyze joint positions, TCP position, digital IO values, and program execution in real-time.

As an educational and research-oriented package, HAL 0.05 is extensively documented: right-click on any component to instantly access a selection of comprehensive annotated examples or to start a tutorial search on YouTube.

HAL 5, developed by Thibault Schwartz, is available on food4Rhino and the HAL web site.