Collision detection algorithm for deformable objects using openGL

Abstract

This paper describes a collision detection method for polygonal deformable objects using OpenGL, which is suitable for surgery simulations. The method relies on the OpenGL selection mode which can be used to find out which objects or geometrical primitives (such as polygons) in the scene are drawn inside a specified region, called the viewing volume. We achieve a significant reduction in the detection time by using a data structure based on an AABB tree. The strength of our method is that it doesn’t require the AABB hierarchy tree to be updated from bottom to top. We are using only a limited set of bounding volumes, which is much smaller than the object’s number of polygons. This enables us to perform a fast update of our structure when objects deform. Therefore, our approach appears to be a reasonable choice for collision detection of deformable objects.