A Voxel-Based Approach to Approximate Collision Handling

John Dingliana and Carol O’Sullivan
Trinity College Dublin

This paper appears in issue Volume 10, Number 4.
An electronic version of this article is available.

Abstract

We present an approach for approximate collision handling which uses probabilistic information for improving the calculated collision response between objects in real-time physically based animation. The system uses an interruptible collision detection mechanism, which checks for intersections between successive levels of a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH). Interruptible collision detection approaches allow us to guarantee target frame rates and are often called on to make an approximation of contact points in order to deliver a suitable collision response within a given time schedule. In our system we use a BVH based on voxels and use the voxel occupancy information as well as the bounding volume interpenetration depth to improve the approximation of contact points when the collision handling stage is interrupted. We also present an evaluation of the plausibility of animations resulting from our approach.

Author Information

John Dingliana, Image Synthesis Group, Computer Science Department, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland John.Dingliana@cs.tcd.ie

Carol O’Sullivan, Image Synthesis Group, Computer Science Department, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland Carol.OSullivan@cs.tcd.ie

BibTeX Entry

@article{DinglianaOSullivan05,
  author = "John Dingliana and Carol O’Sullivan",
  title = "A Voxel-Based Approach to Approximate Collision Handling",
  journal = "journal of graphics, gpu, and game tools",
  volume = "10",
  number = "4",
  pages = "33-48",
  year = "2005",
}