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An Evaluation of Open Source Physics Engines for Use in Virtual Reality Assembly Simulations

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Advances in Visual Computing (ISVC 2012)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNIP,volume 7432))

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Abstract

We present a comparison of five freely available physics engines with specific focus on robotic assembly simulation in virtual reality (VR) environments. The aim was to evaluate the engines with generic settings and minimum parameter tweaking. Our benchmarks consider the minimum collision detection time for a large number of objects, restitution characteristics, as well as constraint reliability and body inter-penetration. A further benchmark tests the simulation of a screw and nut mechanism made of rigid-bodies only, without any analytic approximation. Our results show large deviations across the tested engines and reveal benefits and disadvantages that help in selecting the appropriate physics engine for assembly simulations in VR.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany

    Johannes Hummel, Robin Wolff & Andreas Gerndt

  2. Otto-von-Guericke University, Germany

    Tobias Stein

  3. Virtual Reality Group, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

    Torsten Kuhlen

Authors
  1. Johannes Hummel
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  2. Robin Wolff
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  3. Tobias Stein
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  4. Andreas Gerndt
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  5. Torsten Kuhlen
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Nevada, 89557, Reno, NV, USA

    George Bebis

  2. NASA Ames Research Center, 94035, Moffett Field, CA, USA

    Richard Boyle

  3. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 94720, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Bahram Parvin

  4. Desert Research Institute, 89512, Reno, NV, USA

    Darko Koracin

  5. Department of Computer Science, University of California at Irvine, 92697-3435, Irvine, CA, USA

    Charless Fowlkes

  6. Eastman Kodak Company, 14650-2102, Rochester, NY, USA

    Sen Wang

  7. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Colorado at Denver, 80217, Denver, CO, USA

    Min-Hyung Choi

  8. VRVis Zentrum für Virtual Reality and Visualisierung, 1220, Vienna, Austria

    Stephan Mantler

  9. California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, University of California,,, San Diego, 92093, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Jürgen Schulze

  10. KAUST Visualizatioin Core Lab., 23955-6900, Thurwal, Saudi Arabia

    Daniel Acevedo

  11. Stony Brook University, 11794-4400, NY, USA

    Klaus Mueller

  12. Argonne National Laboratory, 60439, IL, USA

    Michael Papka

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Hummel, J., Wolff, R., Stein, T., Gerndt, A., Kuhlen, T. (2012). An Evaluation of Open Source Physics Engines for Use in Virtual Reality Assembly Simulations. In: Bebis, G., et al. Advances in Visual Computing. ISVC 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7432. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33191-6_34

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33191-6_34

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-33190-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-33191-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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