How to implement dynamically-created/destroyed snapping joints

[PLeoncini]

Intro

Hello everybody,
I am a researcher in VR at CIRA the Italian Aerospace Research Centre, I use MuJoCo since some months coming from OpenDE (a.k.a.ODE).

My setup

MuJoCo 3.2.6, Simulate, Windows 11, Visual Studio 22 C++, Intel Core Ultra 165 w/ NVIDIA RTX graphics.

My question

For doing stable assemblies in a VR maintainance simulator based on ODE, I use to create/destroy a joint linking two bodies whenever assembly/disassembly (breaking) conditions hold (e.g. distance a/o angle b/w the two over/below certain thresholds) - a sort of breakable snaps b/w two bodies to directly manipulate in VR.
Is there a way to resemble such a behaviour in MuJoCo?
I saw a mjs_delete function for destroying an Element, such as maybe a Joint. But I can't find how to create a new joint with type and attributes programmatically. And, is this the straight way to do it, or would it be possible to somehow disable temporarily a joint for re-enabling it later if needed?

Minimal model and/or code that explain my question

If you encountered the issue in a complex model, please simplify it as much as possible (while still reproducing the issue).

Model:

minimal XML

<mujoco>
  <worldbody>
    <light pos="0 0 1"/>
    <geom type="sphere" size="1" rgba="1 0 0 1"/>
  </worldbody>
</mujoco>

Code:

import mujoco
import mediapy as media
model = mujoco.MjModel.from_xml_string(xml)
data = mujoco.MjData(model)

with mujoco.Renderer(model) as renderer:
  mujoco.mj_forward(model, data)
  renderer.update_scene(data)

  media.show_image(renderer.render())

Confirmations

• I searched the latest documentation thoroughly before posting.
• I searched previous Issues and Discussions, I am certain this has not been raised before.