Cable simulation 🔌

[ivrolan]

Hi all!

I am currently exploring efficient and dynamic bimanual manipulation of deformable linear objects like cables. I am interested in using Newton as a simulator to simulate the scenario and collect data. I saw recently that you were preparing a PR to incorporate cables to Newton. However, this was closed recently. Another similar PR was also closed.

What is the state of this work? Do you have a timeline for which this feature will be available in Newton? In the meantime, what are other workarounds to get similar results (simulate a cable and apply forces/torques or accelerations at 2 or more different points)?

Thank you for your time and your work!

[jumyungc]

Hello @ivrolan, thank you for your interest in the Newton cable sim!
The first beta version of the cable simulation is likely to be merged into Newton in December, possibly early in the month. While this initial merge won't be feature-complete, it will be sufficient for testing cable dynamics, with further features rolling out incrementally. Unfortunately, I don't have a good recommendation for workarounds in the meantime.

[ivrolan]

Great! Thank you for the response. Good to hear that it would be already in December. Out of curiosity, what are the incremental features that are going to be rolled out later and what are the basic features that you consider sufficient for cable testing?

[jumyungc]

For the initial rollout, the basic feature set is:

• Cable generation & material tuning: procedurally generating cables and controlling stiffness and damping in a physically meaningful way.
• Simple but robust collisions: cables colliding against rigid bodies and the ground, with friction, and the ability to drag cables using kinematic handles.
• Plastic deformation / hysteresis: basic support for plastic bending so cables can stay deformed instead of behaving purely elastically.

Beyond that, incremental features are anything that pushes us toward feature completeness, and will be rolled out progressively as they mature.

[ivrolan]

That's good to know, thank you for the information! I'll close this discussion for now