Non-Smooth Newton Methods for Deformable Multi-Body Dynamics

Abstract

We present a framework for the simulation of rigid and deformable bodies in the presence of contact and friction. Our method is based on a non-smooth Newton iteration that solves the underlying nonlinear complementarity problems (NCPs) directly. This approach allows us to support nonlinear dynamics models, including hyperelastic deformable bodies and articulated rigid mechanisms, coupled through a smooth isotropic friction model. The fixed-point nature of our method means it requires only the solution of a symmetric linear system as a building block. We propose a new complementarity preconditioner for NCP functions that improves convergence, and we develop an efficient GPU-based solver based on the conjugate residual (CR) method that is suitable for interactive simulations. We show how to improve robustness using a new geometric stiffness approximation and evaluate our method's performance on a number of robotics simulation scenarios, including dexterous manipulation and training using reinforcement learning.

20 pages, ACM Transactions on Graphics

References in corpus (4)

• Emergence of Locomotion Behaviours in Rich Environments
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• Sim2Real View Invariant Visual Servoing by Recurrent Control
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Cited by in corpus (10)

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• A Transition-Aware Method for the Simulation of Compliant Contact with Regularized Friction
• DefGraspSim: Simulation-based grasping of 3D deformable objects
• UniCon: Universal Neural Controller For Physics-based Character Motion
• In-Hand Object Pose Tracking via Contact Feedback and GPU-Accelerated Robotic Simulation
• Entropy Regularized Motion Planning via Stein Variational Inference
• Scalable sim-to-real transfer of soft robot designs
• Digit Stability Inference for Iterative Methods Using Redundant Number Representation
• Geometric Contact Potential