Description of the code SOFA is an open-source framework for multi-physics simulation and is being developed for more than 10 years. Today, SOFA benefits from a large international community made up of research centers and companies. The SOFA core has a LGPL license (permissive and non-contaminating) fostering development of prototypes and products under any commercial license. Among the fields of application, SOFA is commonly used for:

• soft and rigid body dynamics,
• heat transfer,
• robotics
• and visualization.

1. Coupling SOFA + Pulse The objective of this project is to create an open-source plugin for SOFA building an interface with the open-source library Pulse platform. This engine provides comprehensive models for the human physiology. Both API are very close to each other: C++, Cmake, a core library with optional plugins. The integration will be helped with two mentors: one from the SOFA community and another one from the Pulse community.This project will therefore bring a new open-source technology to drive medical research, and innovation.

2. Emscriptening Sofa We now would like to be able to execute SOFA in the browser to promote the development of simulation based web-based applications. As SOFA a implemented in C++ this is not straightforward. This project aims at adapting the core of the SOFA simulation framework so that it can be compiled with Emscripten. Emscripten is a compiler that takes C/C++ code and compiles it to efficient subsets of JavaScript as asm.js and webassembly.

3. Communication protocols in SOFA The purpose of this project is to improve the communication plugin by adding more protocols in it such as vrpn, serial bus communication, and also improve the way it works. This plugin has an abstract base to run and implement different protocols asynchronously to the main sofa-framework thread. In a near future it has to be the default base for communicating with SOFA.

Contact Hugo Talbot, coordinator for SOFA at the Inria Foundation