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From: dherbison@watcgl.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Tough geometry problem
Message-ID: <197@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Nov-86 16:42:48 EST
Article-I.D.: watcgl.197
Posted: Tue Nov 25 16:42:48 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Nov-86 04:34:15 EST
References: <13111@glacier.ARPA>
Reply-To: dherbison@watcgl.UUCP (Don Herbison-Evans)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 9


The problem of finding the distance between 2 ellipsoids appears
to only have been solved recently, by Richard Buckdale of the
Basser Department of Computer Science, University of Sydney,Australia.
If you are interested, you might make a request for the appropriate
technical report from the secretary there (joyce@basser.oz).
Basicly, the answer is the root of a 6th degree polynomial, and
luckily it is the root obtained by Newton-Raphson from the origin.
Superquadrics are probably harder.