Pressure Field Contact
a contact model for rigid-body simulations
Pressure field contact is a compliant contact model for rigid-body dynamics simulations that I developed as an intern at the Toyota Research Institute. The narrated video above describes features and characteristics of this contact model.
The pressure field contact model is a part of the Drake physics engine. This contact model is referred to as the hydroelastic contact model in Drake for historical reasons. This blog post outlines Toyota’s reasoning for implementing pressure field contact in Drake.
The narrated video below shows a visualization of what the contact surface looks for the pressure field contact model.
The two videos below show additional scenarios simulated with pressure field contact. For a detailed explanation of pressure field contact, please take a look at my dissertation.