Consistent penetration depth estimation for deformable collision response

Abstract

Penalty approaches can be used to efficiently resolve collisions of dynamically simulated rigid and deformable objects. These methods compute penalty forces based on the penetration depth of intersecting objects and there exist many algorithms for estimating the exact penetration depth. However, in discrete-time simulations, this information can cause non-plausible collision responses in case of large penetrations or due to the object discretization. In this paper, we present a method to compute consistent n-body penetration depth information in order to reduce collision response artifacts inherent to existing penetration depth approaches. The method considers a set of close surface features to avoid discontinuous penetration depths. Further, a propagation scheme is applied in case of large penetrations to avoid non-plausible, inconsistent penetration depth information. 1