research-article

Soft body locomotion

Authors:

C. Karen LiuAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), Volume 31, Issue 4

Article No.: 26, Pages 1 - 11

https://doi.org/10.1145/2185520.2185522

Published: 01 July 2012 Publication History

Abstract

We present a physically-based system to simulate and control the locomotion of soft body characters without skeletons. We use the finite element method to simulate the deformation of the soft body, and we instrument a character with muscle fibers to allow it to actively control its shape. To perform locomotion, we use a variety of intuitive controls such as moving a point on the character, specifying the center of mass or the angular momentum, and maintaining balance. These controllers yield an objective function that is passed to our optimization solver, which handles convex quadratic program with linear complementarity constraints. This solver determines the new muscle fiber lengths, and moreover it determines whether each point of contact should remain static, slide, or lift away from the floor. Our system can automatically find an appropriate combination of muscle contractions that enables a soft character to fulfill various locomotion tasks, including walking, jumping, crawling, rolling and balancing.

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Cited By

Benchekroun OXie KLiu HGrinspun EAndrews SZordan V(2024)Actuators A La Mode: Modal Actuations for Soft Body LocomotionSIGGRAPH Asia 2024 Conference Papers10.1145/3680528.3687638(1-10)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3680528.3687638
Tang PHinchet RPoranne RThomaszewski BCoros S(2024)Modal Folding: Discovering Smooth Folding Patterns for Sheet Materials using Strain-Space ModesACM SIGGRAPH 2024 Conference Papers10.1145/3641519.3657401(1-9)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641519.3657401
Yin YCheng MLi ZGuan YSu M(2024)Bioinspired deformation computational design method for muscle-driven soft robots using MPMBioinspiration & Biomimetics10.1088/1748-3190/ad7081Online publication date: 16-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-3190/ad7081
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Soft body locomotion
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Computer graphics
    1. Animation
  2. Modeling and simulation
    1. Simulation types and techniques
      1. Simulation by animation

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cover image ACM Transactions on Graphics

ACM Transactions on Graphics Volume 31, Issue 4

July 2012

935 pages

ISSN:0730-0301

EISSN:1557-7368

DOI:10.1145/2185520

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Copyright © 2012 ACM.

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Publication History

Published: 01 July 2012

Published in TOG Volume 31, Issue 4

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Cited By

Benchekroun OXie KLiu HGrinspun EAndrews SZordan V(2024)Actuators A La Mode: Modal Actuations for Soft Body LocomotionSIGGRAPH Asia 2024 Conference Papers10.1145/3680528.3687638(1-10)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3680528.3687638
Tang PHinchet RPoranne RThomaszewski BCoros S(2024)Modal Folding: Discovering Smooth Folding Patterns for Sheet Materials using Strain-Space ModesACM SIGGRAPH 2024 Conference Papers10.1145/3641519.3657401(1-9)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641519.3657401
Yin YCheng MLi ZGuan YSu M(2024)Bioinspired deformation computational design method for muscle-driven soft robots using MPMBioinspiration & Biomimetics10.1088/1748-3190/ad7081Online publication date: 16-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-3190/ad7081
Su MZhang YChen HGuan YXiang C(2023)Modeling, Analysis, and Computational Design of Muscle-driven Soft RobotsSoft Robotics10.1089/soro.2022.012210:4(808-824)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1089/soro.2022.0122
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