Interactive and Continuous Collision Detection for Avatars in Virtual Environments

Abstract

We present a fast algorithm for continuous collision detection between a moving avatar and its surrounding virtual environment. We model the avatar as an articulated body using line-skeletons with constant offsets and the virtual environment as a collection of polygonized objects. Given the position and orientation of the avatar at discrete time steps, we use an arbitrary in-between motion to interpolate the path for each link between discrete instances. We bound the swept-space of each link using a swept volume (SV) and compute a bounding volume hierarchy to cull away links that are not in close proximity to the objects in the virtual environment. We generate the SV's of the remaining links and use them to check for possible interferences and estimate the time of collision between the surface of the SV and the objects in the virtual environment. Furthermore, we use graphics hardware to perform collision queries on the dynamically generated swept surfaces. Our overall algorithm requires no precomputation and is applicable to general articulated bodies. We have implemented the algorithm on a 2.4 GHz Pentium IV PC with NVIDIA GeForce FX 5800 graphics card and applied it to an avatar with 16 links, moving in a virtual environment composed of hundreds of thousands of polygons. Our prototype system is able to detect all contacts between the moving avatar and the environment in 10-30 milliseconds.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2007
Accession Number
ADA612475

Entities

People

  • Dinesh Manocha
  • Jim Templeman
  • Ming C. Lin
  • Stephane Redon
  • Young J Kim

Organizations

  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Collisions
  • Computational Science
  • Computations
  • Computer Graphics
  • Differential Equations
  • Equations
  • Graphics
  • Hierarchies
  • Military Research
  • North Carolina
  • Polygons
  • Simulations
  • Three Dimensional
  • Time Intervals
  • Trajectories
  • Triangles
  • Virtual Reality

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Approximation Theory.
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Space Objects
  • Space - Spacecraft Maneuvers