Distance computation using OBB-trees

Distance computation between geometric models plays an important role in a variety of areas such as robotics and computer graphics. In this paper we present a hierarchical method for computing the distance between two triangular mesh objects. Our method is based on direct utilization of OBB-trees. The only alternative method which uses OBB-trees for distance calculation is the swept-sphere-trees (SST) method where OBBs are indirectly used for construction. Our method employs an alignment scheme proposed for OBB-OBB intersection tests in the distance calculation context. This alignment allows us to reduce the OBB-OBB distance problem to computing the distance between two AABBs. In this paper we also propose an evaluation method, where we measure the parameters affecting the computation time as a function of the distance between object pairs. This allows an effective comparison of the bounding volumes under consideration. Using this scheme we compare the performance of the proposed method with the SST-method which is widely used for distance computation.