high performance computing on graphics processing units: hgpu.org

An intrinsic collision detection unit (ICDU) forms the bottom-most layer of a collision detection pipeline. The ICDU performs collision detection and computes collision information for primitive feature pairs of objects in a 3D dynamic environment. A significant amount of time can be spent by the ICDU during the collision detection process. In this paper, we extend the ICDU framework to take advantages of the computational power of programmable graphics processors (GPUs). Some components of the ICDU framework consist of time demanding and fine-grained tasks that can be implemented on GPUs. By employing the framework, collision information can be computed accurately, robustly, and efficiently. Experimental results show that the proposed method greatly improves the performance of the ICDU. A collection buffer is proposed for the future enhancement of GPU-based collision detectors. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.