School of Computing presents Minchen Li, University of Pennsylvania
Friday, Nov 20, 2020 at 2:30-3:30 pm
Minchen Li (https://www.seas.upenn.edu/~minchenl/) is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania advised by Prof. Chenfanfu Jiang. His research interests include numerical optimization and simulation for computer graphics and beyond, especially physics-based animation and geometry processing. He is a winner of the 2020 Adobe Research Fellowship. Minchen’s current goal is to devise novel methods that are robust, accurate, and efficient to benefit visual effects, geometric design, robotics, engineering, virtual reality, games, etc.
Simulating elastodynamics and contact in a robust and accurate way, not only benefits devising realistic and intriguing animations and visual effects in computer graphics, but is essential for industrial design, robotics, mechanical engineering analysis, etc. However, existing methods are constructed under strong assumptions that limit their application scenarios to a relatively narrow range, which makes the processes sensitive to algorithmic parameters such that extensive tuning frequently needs to be performed for nearly every unique example to obtain consistent quality results. To address these challenges, we propose a robust, accurate, and differentiable elastodynamics and contact simulation framework that can reliably produce consistent quality results for any codimensional solids (volumes, shells, rods, and particles). This system will be in a range of material, time step size, boundary condition, and resolution settings with interpenetration-free guarantees but not require algorithmic framework tuning.
