Rigid Body Dynamics II
An Introduction to Physically Based Modeling: Rigid Body Simulation IIÐNonpenetration Constraints David Baraff Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University Please note: This document is 1997 by David Baraff. This chapter may be freely duplicated and distributed so long as no consideration is received in return, and this copyright notice remains intact. Part II. Nonpenetration Constraints 6 Problems of Nonpenetration Constraints Now that we know how to write and implement the equations of motion for a rigid body, let's consider the problem of preventing bodies from inter-penetrating as they move about an environment. For simplicity, suppose we simulate dropping a point mass (i.e. a single particle) onto a ®xed ¯oor. There are several issues involved here. Because we are dealing with rigid bodies, that are totally non-¯exible, we don't want to allow any inter-penetration at all when the particle strikes the ¯oor. (If we considered our ¯oor to be ¯exible, we might allow the particle to inter-penetrate some small distance, and view that as the ¯oor actually deforming near where the particle impacted. But we don't consider the ¯oor to be ¯exible, so we don't want any inter-penetration at all.) This means that at the instant that the particle actually comes into contact with the ¯oor, what we would like is to abruptly change the velocity of the particle. This is quite different from the approach taken for ¯exible bodies. For a ¯exible body, say a rubber ball, we might consider the collision as occurring gradually. That is, over some fairly small, but non-zero span of time, a force would act between the ball and the ¯oor and change the ball's velocity.
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