Visual Acquisition of Deformable Models

Objects deform in response to contact forces exerted on them. The
deformation depends on material properties, the geometry of the object
and external forces. In this talk we will describe a robotic system for
automatically acquiring observations of a deforming object and for
estimating a model of the deformation from these observations. Models
of deformable objects are in wide-spread use in simulation, computer
graphics and virtual reality. Medical simulators incorporating
physical models of organs and tissue are a significant emerging
virtual reality application.

The material properties of deformable models are often assigned based
on mechanical (and other) testing of material samples. Material
samples do not represent commonly simulated objects well if there is a
high variability in the material of the object, e.g., due to mixed
material, unknown material, or material with imperfections. In
contrast to material sampling, we develop a method to scan the
deformation behavior of a complete object. The scanning is analogous
to the scanning of the visual appearance of an object. The scan
captures the individual response of a complete object to contact
forces. The result of the scan is not only a deformable model but also
data which serves to validate the model.