Capsule collision checking
Pybullet supports capsules in urdf (not standard) link.
Capsule collision checking is significantly faster than mesh on mesh collision checking. Could provide a significant speed up in collision checking if all robots used capsules for each link. Only primitives would remain in the simulation (prism table and capsule robot links). If it does, we may not need swept volume collision checks via openrave any more.
Note: If the primary slow down in pybullet is the physic simulation calculations, then the collision checking speed may not improve much. While bullet has a collision checking world in which collision checks can be performed without physics simulations, pybullet does not have an interface to this, collision check must be done with physics simulation still happening. I suspect mesh on mesh collision checking is causing issues.