[ODE] Ways to contribute brainpower to ODE? (Higher order integrator?)

[Jaroslav Sinecky]

How about cylinder-cylinder collisions including generating reasonable 
contact points and depths? Is it interesting for computational physics? 
It's more about math and geometry but be warned it's not easy. Some 
experience with similar task or orientation in other ode collision 
procedures and problems that it can generate would be very helpful.
It would also include creating some test case for all possible 
cylinder-cylinder collision situations.

Jaroslav


Ryan Gardner wrote:
> Background / About me:
> --------------------------------
> This is my first post the mailing list, so let me begin with a (very)  
> brief introduction. My name is Ryan Gardner. I'm an Applied Physics  
> major (undergrad) at BYU with an emphasis in Computer Science. I am a  
> senior this year, and one of the things I get to (have to?) do before  
> I graduate is a capstone project...
>
> My capstone project must be related to both my major and my emphasis.  
> The most common way that people fulfill capstone projects is to find  
> a professor doing research in an area that needs some "grunt work"  
> and then they just kind of tag along with that.
>
> My original idea was to research/write about the implementation of a  
> Physics API - and write a very basic one that would handle some  
> simple classical mechanics demonstrations (i.e. atwoods machine, a  
> cart on a spring, a cart on a spring with a marble rolling on top of  
> it... etc) - but in the process of doing some background research, I  
> found ODE and realized that there may be a chance that I could make  
> some kind of meaningful contribution to an existing project.
>
> Areas I have thought about contributing:
> -----------------------------------------------------
> I've picked over the documentation and the source code looking for  
> how I could help out. Here are a few of the places I see interest in  
> developing:
>
> 1. A higher order integrator.
> 2. Making some standard mechanics demos / tests (a pendulum on a cart  
> moving on a half-pipe... a cart with a spring on an incline... etc)
>
> I also thought about adding in a mechanism to treat drag forces (both  
> linear and quadratic) - but I haven't looked at the code long enough  
> to figure out where such a mechanism would fit in, and now it would  
> interact with the system... so that is just a side-thought.
>
> Are there any other areas that could use some work?
>
> If I can find something worthwhile to contribute to ODE - and the  
> project gets approved by the capstone coordinator - then I would  
> likely be working 100-200 hours on the project. (I would also be  
> working with a faculty advisor. The advisor I have in mind is  
> excellent at computational physics) I will start cranking away on my  
> project as soon as I get it approved. The approval process is very  
> short (just one person involved)
>
> Please let me know your thoughts about any contributions I can make,
>
> Ryan Gardner
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