Fast, accurate, and generalizable simulations are a key enabler of modern advances in robot design and control. However, existing simulation frameworks in robotics either model rigid environments and mechanisms only, or if they include flexible or soft structures, suffer significantly in one or more of these performance areas. To close this "sim2real" gap, we introduce DisMech, a simulation environment that models highly dynamic motions of rod-like soft continuum robots and structures, quickly and accurately, with arbitrary connections between them. Our methodology combines a fully implicit discrete differential geometry-based physics solver with fast and accurate contact handling, all in an intuitive software interface. Crucially, we propose a gradient descent approach to easily map the motions of hardware robot prototypes to control inputs in DisMech. We validate DisMech through several highly-nuanced soft robot simulations while demonstrating an order of magnitude speed increase over previous state of the art. Our real2sim validation shows high physical accuracy versus hardware, even with complicated soft actuation mechanisms such as shape memory alloy wires. With its low computational cost, physical accuracy, and ease of use, DisMech can accelerate translation of sim-based control for both soft robotics and deformable object manipulation.

翻译：快速、准确且具有泛化能力的仿真是机器人设计与控制领域现代进步的关键推动力。然而，现有机器人学仿真框架要么仅能建模刚性环境与机构，要么在包含柔性或软体结构时，在上述性能指标中至少有一项显著不足。为弥合这一"仿真现实"差距，我们提出DisMech——一个能够快速、准确建模杆状软体连续型机器人及结构高度动态运动，并支持任意构件间连接的仿真环境。该方法将基于全隐式离散微分几何的物理求解器与快速精准的接触处理相结合，并集成于直观的软件界面中。关键的是，我们提出一种梯度下降方法，可便捷地将硬件机器人原型的运动映射为DisMech中的控制输入。通过多项精细软体机器人仿真验证，DisMech较先前最优方法实现了数量级的加速。与硬件的"现实仿真"验证表明，即使面对形状记忆合金丝等复杂软体驱动机制，该方法仍保持高物理精度。凭借其低计算开销、物理精确性及易用性，DisMech能加速基于仿真的控制在软体机器人及可变形物体操作领域的转化应用。