Efficient collision detection using hybrid medial axis transform and BVH for rigid body simulation

Abstract

Medial Axis Transform (MAT) has been recently adopted as the acceleration structure of broad-phase collision detection. Compared to traditional BVH-based methods, MAT can provide a high-fidelity volumetric approximation of 3D complex objects, resulting in higher collision culling efficiency. However, due to MAT’s non-hierarchical structure, it may be outperformed in collision-light scenarios because several cullings at the top level of a BVH may take a large number of cullings with MAT. We propose a collision detection method that combines MAT and BVH to address the above problem. Our technique efficiently culls collisions between dynamic and static objects. Experimental results show that our method has higher culling efficiency than pure BVH or MAT methods.