How can you numerically approximate the geodesic midpoint of 2 points on an ellipsoids?

261 Views Asked by At

Assume we have an arbitrary ellipsoid:

$\frac{x^2}{a^2}+\frac{y^2}{b^2}+\frac{z^2}{c^2}=1$

Or on it's parametric form.

We have 2 arbitrary points on the ellipse $p_1, p_2$. And there is some geodesic line passing through both. There is a midpoint $p_{mid}$ as well.

The goal is to try to approximate this midpoint somehow with the information available.

We can easily calculate the gradient $\nabla E$ where $E$ is the ellipsoid. Now, this gradient points away from the origin of the ellipse. If there is a way to make it point towards $p_{mid}$ we could simply follow the gradient down by $\epsilon$ steps, and we will have found a good approximation of the midpoint.

But I do not know if there is a simple way to compute such an approximation.

1

There are 1 best solutions below

1
On

First of all, this is not an ellipse - it is an ellipsoid.

Second, by doing a search for "geodesic of ellipsoid" I found an excellent article in Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesics_on_an_ellipsoid

In particular, the section titled "Geodesics on a triaxial ellipsoid" describes the solution discovered by Jacobi (an absolutely amazing mathematician - read his biography). It involves elliptic integrals, so your problem probably can only by solved numerically.

Your turn.