Quasi-rigid objects in contact

We investigate techniques for modeling contact between quasi-rigid objects - solids that undergo modest deformation in the vicinity of a contact, while the overall object still preserves its basic shape. The quasi-rigid model combines the benefits of rigid body models for dynamic simulation and the benefits of deformable models for resolving contacts and producing visible deformations. We argue that point cloud surface representations are advantageous for modeling rapidly varying, wide area contacts. Using multi-level computations based on point primitives, we obtain a scalable system that efficiently handles complex contact configurations, even for high-resolution models obtained from laser range scans. Our method computes consistent and realistic contact surfaces and traction distributions, which are useful in many applications.