A robust and tractable contact model for dynamic robotic simulation

Abstract

Existing contact modeling in rigid body simulation is inadequate for robotics: no algorithms guarantee both convergence and nonpenetration at multiple contact points in the presence of Coulomb friction. We present a convex optimization based algorithm that models simultaneous contact at multiple points, ensures nonpenetration, and yields Coulomb friction effects. An example of simulated robotic grasping shows that the proposed algorithm is robust where most other methods fail.