Adaptive time step for fast converging dynamic simulation system

Dynamic simulation can be a powerful tool for the study of complex contact interactions between robots and their environments, but a large amount of computation is often required to generate numerically accurate simulations. This paper describes an adaptive time step approach to dynamical simulation based on monitoring the conservation of energy. This approach allows us to insure numerical stability and computational efficiency at a very low computational overhead, and also provides estimates of the probable range of numerical errors in position and velocity. The approach is applicable to any physical-based dynamic simulation system and can be integrated with other optimization techniques.