Contact Processing in the Simulation of the Multi-body Systems

Contact processing, including collision detection and contact response, is one of the most difficult, but most important areas in the simulation of the multi-body systems. However, the most widespread multi-body simulators, like Matlab/SimMechanics, don’t support the contact processing. Other multi-body simulators, like Vortex or ODE, support the contact processing, but are more limited in the rest of the functionality. This paper presents the overview of the most popular techniques in the contact processing and the implementation of the chosen contact processing technique into Matlab/Simulink. The collision detection has been implemented using existing software tool Solid. The contact response for both contact phenomena collision forces and friction forces – has been developed for the force-based approach. The functionality of the developed contact processing has been performed by the contact tasks of an anthropomorphic manipulator and a six-legged robot and has been compared with identical tasks in Vortex.