Yeah, likewise. It definitely looks like it's formulated for optimizing paths rather than, say, simulating real-time physics, so I'm guessing not yet. From a quick scan of the paper, I didn't see anything on the complexity (O(N logN) or O(N^2) or whatever), but there were some timings:
> Figures 11 [clasped hands] and 15 [underwear model] each took first 10 minutes to find a coarse trajectory, then 5 and 2-3 minutes, respectively, to refine [to 60 fps].
I could totally see something like this being useful or interesting for destructive physics in video games. Like, oh, this surface/shell is about to repulse a rocket slamming into it, deform it for this hit. It's be a very different application but there's a kernel of morphology here feels similar ish, of this kind of softbodied-at-a-distance simulation.
Based on other comments though it sounds way too slow to consider for realtime games though.
TL;DR: they are talking about approach to 3D geometry which avoids self-intersection by design, which is something useful for modeling solid bodies.
However, I hope someone makes a video about shells that are hard to use too :)
"Something something, rule 34."