Virtual Grasping of Deformable Objects with Exact Contact Friction in Real Time

This paper describes a physically-based simulation for grasping tasks in an interactive environment. Fingertips and interacting objects are based on quasi-rigid models. The quasi-rigid model combines a rigid model for dynamic simulation and a deformable model for resolving local contact with friction and surface deformation. We simulate deformation by adding compliance on control points in the contact area based on point primitives. We use a Coulomb's law description to add friction phenomenon in the virtual environment. A linearized formulation of this model in the contact space and an iterative Gauss-Seidel like algorithm are able to solve complex multi-contacts problem between deformable objects in real time. Our method computes consistent and realistic contact surface in a stable way. This allows us to couple this system with an optical motion capture system for Virtual Reality applications.