mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Differentiable Simulation of Soft Multi-body Systems

arXiv 2205.01758 ↗First posted 3 May 2022cs.LG cs.GR cs.ROcited by 39

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Abstract (arXiv)

We present a method for differentiable simulation of soft articulated bodies. Our work enables the integration of differentiable physical dynamics into gradient-based pipelines. We develop a top-down matrix assembly algorithm within Projective Dynamics and derive a generalized dry friction model for soft continuum using a new matrix splitting strategy. We derive a differentiable control framework for soft articulated bodies driven by muscles, joint torques, or pneumatic tubes. The experiments demonstrate that our designs make soft body simulation more stable and realistic compared to other frameworks. Our method accelerates the solution of system identification problems by more than an order of magnitude, and enables efficient gradient-based learning of motion control with soft robots.

Key facts. Cited by 39 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 29 of its 79 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 May 2022.

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29 of 79 references.

References · 29

  1. 2019PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Librarycited by 20,160
  2. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 14,441
  3. 2018Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actorcited by 4,635
  4. 2016Training Deep Nets with Sublinear Memory Costcited by 825
  5. 2019When to Trust Your Model: Model-Based Policy Optimizationcited by 753
  6. 2017Reinforcement Learning with Deep Energy-Based Policiescited by 659
  7. 2016The CMA Evolution Strategy: A Tutorialcited by 364
  8. 2019DiffTaichi: Differentiable Programming for Physical Simulationcited by 248
  9. 2020Solver-in-the-Loop: Learning from Differentiable Physics to Interact with Iterative PDE-Solverscited by 201
  10. 2020Combining Differentiable PDE Solvers and Graph Neural Networks for Fluid Flow Predictioncited by 137
  11. 2020Learning to Control PDEs with Differentiable Physicscited by 131
  12. 2017Robotic Pick-and-Place of Novel Objects in Clutter with Multi-Affordance Grasping and Cross-Domain Image Matchingcited by 124
17 more
  1. 2016A Differentiable Physics Engine for Deep Learning in Roboticscited by 107
  2. 2021PlasticineLab: A Soft-Body Manipulation Benchmark with Differentiable Physicscited by 100
  3. 2018ChainQueen: A Real-Time Differentiable Physical Simulator for Soft Roboticscited by 98
  4. 2020NeuralSim: Augmenting Differentiable Simulators with Neural Networkscited by 77
  5. 2020Scalable Differentiable Physics for Learning and Controlcited by 72
  6. 2018Propagation Networks for Model-Based Control Under Partial Observationcited by 64
  7. 2021Fast and Feature-Complete Differentiable Physics for Articulated Rigid Bodies with Contactcited by 50
  8. 2021Efficient Differentiable Simulation of Articulated Bodiescited by 38
  9. 2020Codimensional Incremental Potential Contactcited by 33
  10. 2019Synthesis of Biologically Realistic Human Motion Using Joint Torque Actuationcited by 23
  11. 2020ADD: Analytically Differentiable Dynamics for Multi-Body Systems with Frictional Contactcited by 17
  12. 2020Learning to Slide Unknown Objects with Differentiable Physics Simulationscited by 12
  13. 2021DiffAqua: A Differentiable Computational Design Pipeline for Soft Underwater Swimmers with Shape Interpolationcited by 9
  14. 2021Learning to Manipulate Amorphous Materialscited by 5
  15. 2020Soft Hybrid Aerial Vehicle via Bistable Mechanismcited by 4
  16. 2021Dynamic Grasping with a "Soft" Drone: From Theory to Practicecited by 3
  17. 2020Accurately Solving Physical Systems with Graph Learningcited by 2

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 10; 2023: 8; 2024: 10; 2025: 8; 2026: 3.

39 papers.

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  1. 2023PAC-NeRF: Physics Augmented Continuum Neural Radiance Fields for Geometry-Agnostic System Identificationcited by 145
  2. 2025PhysTwin: Physics-Informed Reconstruction and Simulation of Deformable Objects from Videoscited by 78
  3. 2023Learning Neural Constitutive Laws From Motion Observations for Generalizable PDE Dynamicscited by 56
  4. 2022NeuPhysics: Editable Neural Geometry and Physics from Monocular Videoscited by 50
  5. 2024GIC: Gaussian-Informed Continuum for Physical Property Identification and Simulationcited by 48
  6. 2024Dynamic 3D Gaussian Tracking for Graph-Based Neural Dynamics Modelingcited by 42
  7. 2023DiffuseBot: Breeding Soft Robots With Physics-Augmented Generative Diffusion Modelscited by 30
  8. 2022RISP: Rendering-Invariant State Predictor with Differentiable Simulation and Rendering for Cross-Domain Parameter Estimationcited by 29
  9. 2023DexDeform: Dexterous Deformable Object Manipulation with Human Demonstrations and Differentiable Physicscited by 23
  10. 2022SAM-RL: Sensing-Aware Model-Based Reinforcement Learning via Differentiable Physics-Based Simulation and Renderingcited by 22
  11. 2023ClothesNet: An Information-Rich 3D Garment Model Repository with Simulated Clothes Environmentcited by 22
  12. 2025Vid2Sim: Generalizable, Video-based Reconstruction of Appearance, Geometry and Physics for Mesh-free Simulationcited by 18
27 more
  1. 2023DiffMimic: Efficient Motion Mimicking with Differentiable Physicscited by 17
  2. 2024Improving Physics-Augmented Continuum Neural Radiance Field-Based Geometry-Agnostic System Identification with Lagrangian Particle Optimizationcited by 16
  3. 2024Stabilizing Reinforcement Learning in Differentiable Multiphysics Simulationcited by 14
  4. 2025UniPhy: Learning a Unified Constitutive Model for Inverse Physics Simulationcited by 11
  5. 2022Knowledge-augmented Deep Learning and Its Applications: A Surveycited by 10
  6. 2024NeuralFluid: Neural Fluidic System Design and Control with Differentiable Simulationcited by 10
  7. 2022Differentiable Hybrid Traffic Simulationcited by 8
  8. 2023Differentiable Visual Computing for Inverse Problems and Machine Learningcited by 7
  9. 2025MASIV: Toward Material-Agnostic System Identification from Videoscited by 7
  10. 2022Differentiable Physics Simulations with Contacts: Do They Have Correct Gradients w.r.t. Position, Velocity and Control?cited by 6
  11. 2023DiffVL: Scaling Up Soft Body Manipulation using Vision-Language Driven Differentiable Physicscited by 6
  12. 2026MOSIV: Multi-Object System Identification from Videoscited by 6
  13. 2022Learning Object Manipulation Skills from Video via Approximate Differentiable Physicscited by 5
  14. 2022Real2Sim2Real Transfer for Control of Cable-driven Robots via a Differentiable Physics Enginecited by 5
  15. 2024Implicit Neural Representation for Physics-driven Actuated Soft Bodiescited by 5
  16. 2024One-Shot Real-to-Sim via End-to-End Differentiable Simulation and Renderingcited by 5
  17. 2022Differentiable Frequency-based Disentanglement for Aerial Video Action Recognitioncited by 4
  18. 2022Differentiable Analog Quantum Computing for Optimization and Controlcited by 4
  19. 2024PokeFlex: A Real-World Dataset of Volumetric Deformable Objects for Roboticscited by 4
  20. 2025Hierarchical Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Control Barrier Functions for Safety-Critical Autonomous Systemscited by 4
  21. 2025Embodied Co-Design for Rapidly Evolving Agents: Taxonomy, Frontiers, and Challengescited by 4
  22. 2024D-Cubed: Latent Diffusion Trajectory Optimisation for Dexterous Deformable Manipulationcited by 3
  23. 2024Learning Object Properties Using Robot Proprioception via Differentiable Robot-Object Interactioncited by 3
  24. 2025TopoGaussian: Inferring Internal Topology Structures from Visual Cluescited by 2
  25. 2026Learning Physics-Guided Residual Dynamics for Deformable Object Simulationcited by 2
  26. 2025Rigid Body Adversarial Attackscited by 0
  27. 2026PhysHanDI: Physics-Based Reconstruction of Hand-Deformable Object Interactionscited by 0