Abstract
The ability to simulate complex physical situations in near-real-time is a critical element of many engineering and robotics applications. Unfortunately the computation cost of standard physical simulation methods increases rapidly as the situation becomes more complex. The result is that even when using the fastest supercomputers we are still able to interactively simulate only small, toy worlds. To solve this problem I have proposed changing the way we represent and simulate physics in order to reduce the computational complexity of physical simulation, thus making possible interactive simulation of complex situations. A prototype system, called ThingWorld, that makes use of these new representations has been implemented for UNIX computer systems and has demonstrated O(n) computational complexity (linear scaling of computational cost with increasing model complexity) for multibody dynamic simulations.
This research was made possible by ARO Grant No. DAAL03-87-K-0005
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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Pentland, A.P. (1991). ThingWorld: A multibody simulation system with low computational complexity. In: Sriram, D., Logcher, R., Fukuda, S. (eds) Computer-Aided Cooperative Product Development. WCACPD 1989. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 492. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0014296
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0014296
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