Cone-plane intersection

Compute the intersection of a cone and a plane, where the result is represented as an ellipse

Description

This function computes the intersection of a cone and a plane, where the result is represented either as an ellipse or in the form of a Gaussian distribution.

This algorithm can be used to extract probabilistically information concerning gazing or pointing direction. Indeed, by representing a visual field as a cone and representing a table as a plane, the Gaussian distribution can be used to compute the probability that one object on the table is observed/pointed by the user.

The source code is an implementation of the algorithms described in the book "Robot Programming by Demonstration: A Probabilistic Approach", EPFL/CRC Press (more information on http://programming-by-demonstration.org/book/)

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.5 (R2007b)

[Gavriel Aminov]

The very thing I need! I had a need of a routine that calculates the intersection of antenna beam with the terrain surface. This routine has helped me. Some more features I need in this routine are the next:
1) How do I model the cone of two different angles at its two axes - the axis of elevation and the axis of azimuth? Which parameters must be changed at the cone matrix in order to achieve such an "ellipsoid" cone?
2) How can I modulate the gain of the intersection instead of the modulation by PDF function? E.g. modulation by the sinc function (as is at the common antennas)?

[Val Schmidt]

I want to comment on my own comment The author of this package emailed me directly, pointing out that I had failed to normalize the coneDir vector.

SO PLEASE DISREGARD MY MESSAGE ABOVE.

The error was mine!

-Val

[Yanhua]

anyone advise on how to normalize the coneDir vector?