Sofa Topology Modifier

Hi @epernod,

I am a PhD student that just started in January, I will describe you my program better and my final aim, to be clear.

I am involved in a European project in which we develop Self Healing Soft robots. Basically we create soft grippers and hands made up by particular materials that have self healing properties. So, they can recover, their initial shape and mechanical properties, after they undergoes to some damages (like cutting and penetrations).

FINAL AIM: With help of SOFA, we want to do a “damage tracking” while the robots execute its task. In substance while the robot it’s in operation we want to know if some damages occurs and where is this damage. I and my advisor, had also an Online meeting with @Hugo that kindly explain to us all the possibility with SOFA. So we want to track the damage with the Inverse (kinematic) Soft Robots plugin made by DEFROST team ( so the event that make the damage can be for example the overcome of yield stress of the material) and simulate the damage removing tetrahedrons on the interested part ( that’s why I am viewing topological modifiers).
In the end an healing procedure it is obtained, that will restore the initial shape of the robot recovering the wound (adding tetrahedron, respecting the chemical kinematic of the material).

So, as you can note, we are interested also into some private license plugins, like the above mentioned Inverse Soft robot plugin and maybe to work with Unity3D for the topological change.

Anyway, for now we are at early stages of the project and due to the Corona situation, I am in smart working, and the only thing that I can do is to damage the robot model in simulation. Referring to your video, that is very cool, I would like to do something like that for now, but the only “haptic device” that I have at home is my mouse XD .
So I would like to know how to do something like that, using the mouse as “carving tool”, i want to specify that I want to damage a volume and not a surface.

Sorry for the long story, but I will work a lot with SOFA.
Best,
Pasquale

Thank you @epernod for the clarification on mouse events. I have just select them in Mouse manager or I have to activate them I have to insert some codes in the scene?

Regarding the Topology Modifiers, yesterday I read this topic , I was curious about the last answer, Which talk about the project of MIMESIS group of INRIA, about the virtual cutting simulation, based on remeshing of tetras, which is exactly what i would to do. Is this plugin in open source or it have private license?

Kind regards.

Pasquale.

P.S. I don’t know if was a my problem, or an internal bug, but I answered earlier, but I don’t see my previous replies. Sorry, if you find more replies with the same contents.

Hello @epernod,

Thank you! It works now!

Now I have just one question, I am searching some algorithms for virtual cutting on 3D meshes, which refines and divide the tetras at each cut . I saw in the marketplace that there is a plugin, in private licence, which allow the communication between Sofa and Unity3D. There are some algorithms of virtual cutting of #D meshes in this plugin?

Best,

Pasquale.

Hi dear @secretdevil,

Thank you for the advice! Now I am following all the examples on topological changes, and I have just a question about the method you proposed.
So if I understand I can define some planes of cut in my code and divide the tetras that are crosses this plane, so as result I have two tetras with a shared triangle in the middle. These planes of cutting are defined as collision models in SOFA?

Kind regards,
Pasquale .

P.S I also read the documentation, about Topology Algorithms, and there is also this function subDivideTetrahedronWithPlane() and subDivideRestTetrahedronWithPlane(), I find them in the code TetraHedronSetAlgorithms.h, but How to activate them?

Hello @Hugo ,

Now I am concentrating on damage tracking and not on damage simulation, so for now I change a bit the road to model the self healing process step by step .

Thank you,