Hi,
this sounds like a standard problem in Computational Geometry - I guess
game developers have to deal with something like this all the time. You
may want to look at a textbook or two.
An article with the promising title "On fast computation of distance
between line segments" can be found here:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0020-0190(85)90032-8
I found that one via Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_problems
Good hunting!
Stephan
Am 08.03.2011 22:55, schrieb Darcy Webber:
Dear R helpers,
I think that this may be a bit of a math question as the more I
consider it, the harder it seems. I am trying to come up with a way to
work out the minimum distance between line segments. For instance,
consider 20 random line segments:
x1<- runif(20)
y1<- runif(20)
x2<- runif(20)
y2<- runif(20)
plot(x1, y1, type = "n")
segments(x1, y1, x2, y2)
Inititally I thought the solution to this problem was to work out the
distance between midpoints (it quickly became apparent that this is
totally wrong when looking at the plot). So, I thought that perhaps
finding the minimum distance between each of the lines endpoints AND
their midpoints would be a good proxy for this, so I set up a loop
that uses pythagoras to work out these 9 distances and find the
minimum. But, this solution is obviously flawed as well (sometimes
lines actually intersect, sometimes the minimum distances are less
etc). Any help/dection on this one would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Darcy.
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