Bullet vs ODE for robot manipulation

[ljklonepiece]

Dear friends and developers,

I was wondering which physical engine (Bullet or ODE) is more suitable (in terms of speed, accuracy) for handling collision detection (mesh-mesh collision) for robot arm manipulation tasks?

Thanks a lot in advance!

JK

[martin_simulation]

Hi JK,

Doing grasping using mesh collision is always difficult because estimation of penetration and contact generation can be very complex.
Use of convex meshes usually leads to better results.
For the comparison, ODE is certainly less stable than Bullet for my experience with convex meshes.

The new Vortex plugin is still very recent but behaves better. The upcoming V-Rep 3.0.6 expected in January will contain an improved version of the Vortex convex-convex contact generation which was proven very suitable for stable grasp simulation.

Best regards,

Martin

[ljklonepiece]

Hi JK,

Doing grasping using mesh collision is always difficult because estimation of penetration and contact generation can be very complex.
Use of convex meshes usually leads to better results.
For the comparison, ODE is certainly less stable than Bullet for my experience with convex meshes.

The new Vortex plugin is still very recent but behaves better. The upcoming V-Rep 3.0.6 expected in January will contain an improved version of the Vortex convex-convex contact generation which was proven very suitable for stable grasp simulation.

Best regards,

Martin

Thanks a lot, Martin!
I was wondering if you and your team can put in more detailed documentation on the simulation of robot arm manipulations.