An Efficient Method for Simulating Flexible Connectors

Physically-based dynamic simulation has been an active research area for many years. It is an important technique to enhance the realism of interactive multimedia or computer graphics applications. However, while most of these applications require real-time performance to handle user interactions, dynamic simulation is generally expensive computationally, as simulating a flexible (non-rigid) object is typically done by modeling it with a large number of rigid bodies, in which constraints or impulses among the rigid bodies need to be processed continuously. In addition, in an interactive type of application, the motion of rigid bodies may sometimes be intervened. Such interactions, however, cannot be modeled with typical dynamic simulation techniques, such as associating constraints or behavior functions to the rigid bodies, due to its unpredictable nature. In this paper, we present a method for simulating flexible connectors. Our method combines dynamic constraints and impulse-based simulation to support real-time simulation of flexible connectors, such as ropes or chains. It also handles dynamic interventions efficiently. Index Terms — Physically-based dynamic simulation, dynamic constraints, impulse-based, intervention