Collision Detection and Analysis in a Physically Based Simulation
William J. Bouma, George Vaněček · 1991
We consider the geometric support in detecting and analyzing collisions and contact between arbitrarily shaped polyhedral objects for a physically based simulation. The contact detection is formulated as a static collision-detection problem in three-dimensional space. We address both robustness and efficiency of the problem, and show how both can be achieved by using the brep-index data structure. 1 Introduction A computer simulation of physical systems that is based on rigid-body dynamics and that involves objects with arbitrary shapes requires the services of a geometric modeling system. The geometric modeling system is used initially to establish mass properties and to formulate constraints for the system's dynamics. When simulating the motion of objects in the presence of obstacles with possible collisions and prolonged contact, the geometric modeling system is used throughout the simulation. The dynamics modeler must inquire at each time step whether two bodies are about to colli...