Physically based real-time interactive assembly simulation of cable harness

In this paper, we designed and developed an interactive assembly simulation system of cable harness. First, we establish a real-time physical model of cable harness based on an extension of the mass–spring model. We use various kinds of springs to describe the different properties of the cable harness: linear springs for stretching, bending springs for bending, and torsion springs for geometrical torsion and material twisting. The constraints of connectors and clips on cable harness are both considered. We also associate the elastic coefficients of various springs with the material parameters of the cable. Moreover, we use spherical bounding volume hierarchy and triangular facets for collision detection of cable harness during the assembly simulation. By applying contact forces to both ends of the cable links that collide with the surrounding environment, we obtain the real-time contact response of cable harness. Finally, we apply the proposed model to a cable assembly task. The results show that the proposed model successfully expressed the deformation of the cable harness and the interactive manipulation is computationally efficient.