Implicit Multibody Penalty-based
Distributed Contact
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 2014

People

• Hongyi Xu
  University of Southern California
• Yili Zhao
  University of Southern California
• Jernej Barbič
  University of Southern California
Xu and Zhao both contributed equally to this paper, and should be considered equal first authors.

Project material

• Paper (PDF, 7 Mb)
• Video (Quicktime Mp4, 39 Mb)
• High-res video (Quicktime Mp4, 91 Mb)
• Presentation (SCA 2014) (zipped pptx, 120 Mb)
• Distance field code (zipped C/C++, 0.05 Mb)
• Simulation code (zipped C/C++, 0.07 Mb)

Citation

• Hongyi Xu, Yili Zhao, Jernej Barbič:
  Implicit Multibody Penalty-based Distributed Contact IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 20(9), 2014. BIBTEX

Abstract

The penalty method is a simple and popular approach to resolving contact in computer graphics and robotics. Penalty-based contact, however, suffers from stability problems due to the highly variable and unpredictable net stiffness, and this is particularly pronounced in simulations with time-varying distributed geometrically complex contact. We employ semi-implicit integration, exact analytical contact gradients, symbolic Gaussian elimination and a SVD solver to simulate stable penalty-based frictional contact with large, time-varying contact areas, involving many rigid objects and articulated rigid objects in complex conforming contact and self-contact. We also derive implicit proportional-derivative control forces for real-time control of articulated structures with loops. We present challenging contact scenarios such as screwing a hexbolt into a hole, bowls stacked in perfectly conforming configurations, and manipulating many objects using actively controlled articulated mechanisms in real time.

Comments, questions to Jernej Barbič.

Related projects

• Six-DoF Haptic Rendering of Contact between Geometrically Complex Reduced Deformable Models
• Signed Distance Fields for Polygon Soup Meshes

Funding

• NSF (CAREER-53-4509-6600)
• Intel Corporation (donation of two workstations)
• USC Annerberg Graduate Fellowship to Hongyi Xu

Disclaimer

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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