The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 25, 2000
Filed:
Aug. 29, 1997
Brian Mirtich, Arlington, MA (US);
Mitsubishi Electric Information Technology Center America, Inc., Cambridge a, US;
Abstract
The present invention relates to a system and method for determining collisions between polyhedron objects represented by their features. Collisions are detected by determining the relative positions of closest features between pairs of polyhedra. The present invention is based upon comparisions of a feature from one polygon with a Voronoi region corresponding to a feature of another polyhedron. If a closest point from each feature is within the Voronoi region of the other feature, then the two features are the closest for that pair of objects. If the features are not within the Voronoi regions, then a new feature for one of the objects or polyhedra is selected based upon the position of the features relative to the Voronoi region. When a feature is of an edge type, the edge is clipped against the planes defining the Voronoi region. A new feature is selected based upon the relative positions of the points where the edge is clipped to the corresponding features defining the Voronoi region. In this manner, new features are selected which reduce the distance between features or which reduce the dimension of the selected feature without increasing the distance between features. New features are selected until the closests points are within the Voronoi region of the other feature, thus defining the closest features. The process is repeated for all pairs of objects and upon movement of any objects to continuously determine the closest features between sets of moving objects.