Abstract: Voxel-based objects are manipulated and interacted with in a physically ristic way such that during movement of the graphical objects, collisions are automatically detected and the graphical objects are prevented from penetrating each other. Applications include computer graphics and animation, CAD/CAM, and virtual reality applications that require real-time interaction between complex three-dimensional object models. When objects are represented in a voxel-based format where objects consist of clusters of regularly or irregularly spaced sampled data points, rather than a conventional graphic format where objects are represented by lists of polygons, primitive surfaces, or geometries, moving objects in virtual space involves shifting the voxel-based data in a large memory array representing the virtual space of the system and detecting collisions among moving objects by checking the new memory locations of object voxels to see if they are already occupied.