Impulse-Based Dynamic Simulation

This paper discusses a new approach to dynamic simulation called impulse-based simulation. We have focused on the twin goals of physical accuracy and computational efficiency. Our simulator can accurately model complex dynamic systems in real time. The organization of this paper is as follows. Section 2 gives an overview of the impulse-based method for dynamic simulation, highlighting its differences from and advantages over more traditional constraint-based methods. Section 3 describes collision check scheduling, and how this standard bottleneck in dynamic simulation can be streamlined. Section 4 discusses our method of resolving collisions between bodies. We treat collisions in a fully general manner, accounting for friction as well as non-perfectly elastic behavior. Correctly computing collision impulses is critical for achieving physically accurate simulations. Finally, section 5 describes some of the simulations wehave performed with our simulator, illustrating the speed and accuracy of the approach, and mentions some future work