How to find an arbitrary perpendicular vector of another vector in MATLAB? - matlab

Question

I need to create arbitrary perpendicular vector n with components (a, b, c) to another known vector k with components (x,y,z).
The following code creates arbitrary vector n, but I need random numbers for components in the range [-inf, inf] how can I acheive that? (because otherwise vector components created may not exceed some value in given case 10^11 ) Or maybe concept "arbitrary vector" does not require that?
function [a,b,c] = randomOrghogonalVector(x,y,z)
a = 0;
b = 0;
c = 0;
randomDistr = rand * 10^11 * 2 - 10^11; % issue 1
% excluding trivial solution
if x == 0 && y == 0 && z ==0
a = NaN; b = a; c = a;
else
if z ~=0
a = randomDistr;
b = randomDistr;
c = - (x * a + b * y ) / z;
else
if z == 0 && x ~= 0
c = randomDistr;
b = randomDistr;
a = - (z * c + b * y ) / x;
else
if z == 0 && x == 0 && y ~= 0
c = randomDistr;
a = randomDistr;
b = - (z * c + a * x ) / y;
end
end
end
end

Answer 1

The easiest solution I see is to first find a random vector that is orthogonal to your original vector, and then give it a random length. In Matlab, this can be done by defining the following function
function [a, b, c] = orthoVector(x, y, z)
xin = [x;y;z];
e = xin;
while ((e'*xin)==xin'*xin)
e = 2.*rand(3,1)-1;
end
xout = cross(xin, e);
xout = 1.0/(rand()) * xout;
a = xout(1);
b = xout(2);
c = xout(3);
end
Line-by-line, here's what I'm doing:
you asked for this format [a,b,c] = f(x,y,z). I would recommend using function xout = orthoVector(xin), which would make this code even shorter.
Since Matlab handles vectors best as vectors, I'm creating vector xin.
e will be one random vector, different from xin used to compute the orthogonal vector. Since we're dealing with random vectors, we initialize it to be equal to xin.
For this algorithm to work, we need to make sure that e and xin are pointing in different directions. Until this is the case...
...create a new random vector e. Note that rand will give values between 0 and 1. Thus, each component of e will be between -1 and 1.
Ok, if we end, e and xin are pointing in different directions
Our vector xout will be orthogonal to xin and e.
Let's multiply vector xout by a random number between 1 and "very large"
a is first component of xout
b is second component of xout
c is third component of xout
all done.
Optional: if you want to have very large vectors, you could replace line 8 by
xout = exp(1./rand())/(rand()) * xout;
This will give you a very large spread of values.
Hope this helps, cheers!