[ros-users] "GJK" Distances in Gazebo

First, thanks to the Gazebo team for all the additions (topics and services)
to the Gazebo node recently, these have been very useful for a project we
are working on.

My question: Is there an easy way to get the minimum distance between two
objects (as would be computed by the GJK algorithm)? That is, not the
distance between the "locations" of the objects, but between the closest
points on their surfaces. I know bullet provides API access to this
information (not sure about ODE), and Gazebo has some hooks into bullet, so
perhaps that's the way to do it? If anyone has any thoughts on this I would
appreciate hearing from you.

Thanks,
Daniel Hewlett