Related papers: Data-Augmented Contact Model for Rigid Body Simula…
We present a differentiable dynamics solver that is able to handle frictional contact for rigid and deformable objects within a unified framework. Through a principled mollification of normal and tangential contact forces, our method…
Physics simulation is ubiquitous in robotics. Whether in model-based approaches (e.g., trajectory optimization), or model-free algorithms (e.g., reinforcement learning), physics simulators are a central component of modern control pipelines…
This paper evaluates state-of-the-art contact models at predicting the motions and forces involved in simple in-hand robotic manipulations. In particular it focuses on three primitive actions --linear sliding, pivoting, and rolling-- that…
We present a principled method for motion prediction via dynamic simulation for rigid bodies in intermittent contact with each other where the contact region is a planar non-convex contact patch. Such methods are useful in planning and…
High-fidelity physics simulation is essential for scalable robotic learning, but the sim-to-real gap persists, especially for tasks involving complex, dynamic, and discontinuous interactions like physical contacts. Explicit system…
We present a principled method for motion prediction via dynamic simulation for rigid bodies in intermittent contact with each other where the contact is assumed to be a planar non-convex contact patch. The planar non-convex contact patch…
Robotic manipulation can greatly benefit from the data efficiency, robustness, and predictability of model-based methods if robots can quickly generate models of novel objects they encounter. This is especially difficult when effects like…
Dexterous manipulation requires careful reasoning over extrinsic contacts. The prevalence of deforming tools in human environments, the use of deformable sensors, and the increasing number of soft robots yields a need for approaches that…
Dynamics simulation with frictional contacts is important for a wide range of applications, from cloth simulation to object manipulation. Recent methods using smoothed lagged friction forces have enabled robust and differentiable simulation…
This article presents computationally efficient algorithms for modeling two special cases of rigid contact---contact with only viscous friction and contact without slip---that have particularly useful applications in robotic locomotion and…
Two-dimensional (planar) rigid-body impact mechanics for application in automobile collisions have been described by a number of researchers over the last several decades. Little has been discussed, however, regarding three-dimensional…
In this paper we demonstrate the limitations of common rigid-body contact models used in the robotics community by comparing them to a collection of data-driven and data-reinforced models that exploit underlying structure inspired by the…
With the maturation of differentiable physics, its role in various downstream applications: such as model predictive control, robotic design optimization, and neural PDE solvers, has become increasingly important. However, the derivative…
We present a computational framework for simulating filaments interacting with rigid bodies through contact. Filaments are challenging to simulate due to their codimensionality, i.e., they are one-dimensional structures embedded in…
We present a principled method for dynamic simulation of rigid bodies in intermittent contact with each other where the contact is assumed to be a non-convex contact patch that can be modeled as a union of convex patches. The prevalent…
Differentiable simulators provide an avenue for closing the sim-to-real gap by enabling the use of efficient, gradient-based optimization algorithms to find the simulation parameters that best fit the observed sensor readings. Nonetheless,…
Frictional contact has been extensively studied as the core underlying behavior of legged locomotion and manipulation, and its nearly-discontinuous nature makes planning and control difficult even when an accurate model of the robot is…
The incorporation of appropriate inductive bias plays a critical role in learning dynamics from data. A growing body of work has been exploring ways to enforce energy conservation in the learned dynamics by encoding Lagrangian or…
Rigid bodies, plastic impact, persistent contact, Coulomb friction, and massless limbs are ubiquitous simplifications introduced to reduce the complexity of mechanics models despite the obvious physical inaccuracies that each incurs…
In this paper, we develop a principled method to model line and surface contact with point contact (we call this point, equivalent contact point) that is consistent with physics-based models of surface (line) contact. Assuming that the set…