The Impulse Graph: A New Dynamic Structure For Global Collisions

In interactive virtual environments and dynamic simulations, collisions between complex objects and articulated bodies may occur simultaneously at multiple points or regions of interference. Many solutions to the collision response problem are formulated based on the local pair-wise contact dynamics. In this article, we present a new solution to the global interactions and dynamic response between multiple structures in a three-dimensional environment. This is based on a new dynamic impulse graph that tracks the reaction forces through the entire system and gives a global view of all the interactions in a multibody system.