Contact Points between Robot and Ground: How to access this information.

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Hi Guys,

i have the following problem, for which i want to implement a plugin:

I have got a robot, which shall move on a non-planar surface, being modeled as height map, for example. Thereby, i want to determine at which points (position, surface roughness and normal vector e.g.) the contact between the robot and the ground takes place. I want to avoid using multiple contact sensors because we do not need to model additional effects like sensor noise or quantization. So i would be very happy with the pure, ground truth information from the physics engine.

1. What would be the appropriate way to access this information? Is there a possibility to access the physics engine inside a world plugin or the model plugin itself?
2. Is it also possible to replace the height map with a dae-model, for example, in order to utilize this as a ground structure and measure the contact between the robot and the dae-model?

Best regards!