dsh-nonead-universal-robots

A DeepSeek Harness (DSH) plugin that lets you control Universal Robots (UR) collaborative arms directly from natural language, developed by Suzhou Nonead Robot Technology Co., Ltd. based on the same logic as the company's own nUR MCP Server. (Suzhou Nonead Robot Technology Co., Ltd.)

This plugin shares the same ancestry as the company's Nonead-Universal-Robots-MCP (see "Reference implementation" below). It exposes the "control a UR robot with AI" capability as native DSH tools: the plugin starts a persistent Python worker (which internally reuses the vendored URBasic library), and tools talk to the robot through that worker. After a single connect, you can keep issuing commands to the same IP.

⚠️ Safety notice: this plugin drives a real robotic arm directly. Always keep the robot in sight, keep the emergency stop within reach, and keep the workspace clear of people/obstacles. Treat it with the same care as granting the bash tool. You (or the model) bear full responsibility for any motion command.

🛡️ Motion approval gate: commands that physically move the arm or run a program — ur_movej / ur_movel / ur_move_x|y|z / ur_draw_* / ur_load_program / ur_run_program / ur_send_script / ur_reset_error — pause and wait for human confirmation before being sent to the robot. In an interactive deployment (approval policy ask) a confirmation dialog is shown in the UI; a call made without an approval service or without an agent fails closed (the command is rejected) and never moves without approval. Set requireApprovalForMotion: false to disable this gate.

Feature overview

Every tool except connect takes an ip argument and requires that IP to be connected first.

Install into a DSH profile

Option 1 — install as a bundle (manual)

1. Add the plugin as a dependency in your target profile's package.json:

   // C:\Users\<you>\.dsh\profiles\web\package.json
   {
     "dependencies": {
       "dsh-nonead-universal-robots": "^0.3.8"
     },
     "dsh": {
       "profile": {
         "bundles": [               // add the plugin here (later order is fine)
           "...",
           "dsh-nonead-universal-robots"
         ]
       }
     }
   }

2. Install dependencies via dsh plugin (equivalent to running pnpm inside the profile directory):

   dsh plugin --profile web install
   # or cd "$DSH_HOME/profiles/web" && pnpm install

3. Restart DSH. The plugin's cordis.patch.yml automatically inserts the plugin line into the config tree, and the tools appear in the model's tool list as ur_*.

Option 2 — local path (development)

Add the repository path to the profile dependency (pnpm supports file:) to iterate in this repository:

"dependencies": {
  "dsh-nonead-universal-robots": "file:D:/MyProgram/GitLab/dsh-Nonead-Universal-Robots/dsh-nonead-universal-robots"
}

Python runtime

The plugin needs a usable Python and a few dependencies (numpy, paramiko) to start the worker. Point it at an interpreter with the pythonBin config:

pip install -r requirements.txt

pythonBin (default python), commandTimeoutMs (motion/script timeout, default 60000), and connectTimeoutMs (first-connect timeout, default 30000) in cordis.patch.yml can all be overridden per deployment. If python is not on PATH, use an absolute path, e.g. "C:\\Python312\\python.exe" or "/usr/bin/python3".

Health check / testing

Verify the plugin and Python runtime without touching a real robot:

npm run test:python   # python ur_worker.py --selfcheck: verify Python/numpy/paramiko/URBasic/RTDE config
npm test              # start a real worker, run ping + an invalid op (verify the stdio protocol & process mgmt)

npm test prints selftest passed. or exits non-zero. If python is not on PATH, set it via the environment:

UR_PYTHON=C:\\Python312\\python.exe npm test

The first ur_connect to a robot has an ~20s RTDE readiness wait; on timeout it returns a clear error rather than hanging.

How it works

DSH model        @deepseek-ai/dsh-tools        python/ur_worker.py          UR robot
  │  ur_movej(...)  │                              │                          │
  ├────────────────►  ctx.tools.register(defineTool)                        │
  │                  │  lib/worker.js               │                          │
  │                  ├── spawn(ur_worker.py) ──────►│  import URBasic          │
  │                  │   {id,op,params} ───────────►│  RTDE+Dashboard+RTC      │
  │                  │  ◄── {message,data} ─────────┤  run each op             │
  │  ◄── text ───────┤                              │                          │

• python/ur_worker.py — a persistent stdio JSON worker. It keeps ROBOTS / ROBOT_MODELS dicts, connects by IP, and runs one command per call. Motion commands use (bounded) "arrival confirmation" polling and return a structured error on failure.
• lib/worker.js — lazily starts the worker once and keeps it alive, matching line-delimited JSON requests/responses, with timeout and cancel (forwards exec.signal).
• lib/index.js — the Cordis plugin that imports defineTool to register the above as tools; inject: ['tools'].

Tool naming & examples

Tool names are stable as ur_*. Example prompts:

Connect to 192.168.1.199 and read the current TCP pose.

ur_connect(ip="192.168.1.199")
ur_get_tcp_pose(ip="192.168.1.199")

Lower the TCP of 192.168.1.199 by 20mm along the Z axis.

ur_get_tcp_pose(ip="192.168.1.199")
ur_move_z(ip="192.168.1.199", distance=-0.02)

Draw a circle of radius 50mm (vertical plane).

ur_draw_circle(ip="192.168.1.199", center=[0.3,-0.2,0.4,0,3.14,0], r=0.05)

Reference implementation

• Plugin repository: https://github.com/NoneadChina/dsh-nonead-universal-robots

This plugin shares the same ancestry as Nonead's Nonead-Universal-Robots-MCP (GitHub: https://github.com/nonead/Nonead-Universal-Robots-MCP), reusing its URBasic library and robot-control logic, re-encapsulated by the same team for DeepSeek Harness as this plugin's ur_* tools and stdio worker protocol. URBasic is MIT (© Tony Ke & Anthony Zhuang / Universal Robots, 2009-2025).

Notes / limitations

• Connection persistence — the worker process lives for the plugin's lifetime and keeps robot connections by IP; after a worker crash or a DSH restart you must connect again.
• Remote control mode — some UR robots must be in "remote control" to execute motion/program commands; ur_connect reports that state.
• Tool digital I/O — ur_get_digital_in / ur_set_digital_out with which="tool" control the tool-flange digital I/O. Tool digital signals are not carried by RTDE, so reading a tool input runs a short URScript program (via SendProgram) that may interrupt a running program; writing a tool output sends the URScript write_tool_digital_out command. Tool digital output read-back is not supported (no reliable read_tool_digital_out expression).
• Joint current — the current RTDE recipe does not expose per-joint current directly, so ur_get_joint_current is not provided (the reference implementation's version of this tool has a value bug; this implementation does not carry it over).
• Threading / cancel — motion commands poll until arrival within commandTimeoutMs; for long trajectories, remind the model in the prompt to set a reasonable timeout or split the motion into steps.
• Not a safety boundary — this plugin is on par with the bash tool and can drive physical equipment; test thoroughly on a real robot before production use.

License

This project adopts a User-Segmented Dual Licensing model:

• AGPLv3 for individual users and organizations with ≤10 people (open source; see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html).
• Commercial license (required) for organizations with >10 people, or for anyone who needs to avoid the AGPLv3 source-disclosure obligation (e.g. SaaS / closed distribution).

See LICENSE for the full agreement. For a commercial license, contact service@nonead.com.

python/URBasic (vendored) remains under its own MIT License (© Universal Robots, 2009-2025).