Francois Conti

Robotics Laboratory, Stanford University

“Tissue modeling via space filling elastic spheres”

Simulating the dynamics of complex deformable solids in real time requires minimizing the computer cycles for processing the physical models. In this project we define a physical model by filling the surface mesh of the object with spheres representing sections of mass of the solid. Spheres are connected together with spring-damper links where the coefficients are defined for each degree of freedom such as extension, torsion and flexion. Finally each vertex of the mesh is connected to the skeleton (spheres and links) to follow the behavior of the physical model. Using the properties of spheres we are also able to compute fast collision detection between multiple solids. Finally we present the connection to a haptic device for real time manipulation.