Algorithm to detect intersection of two rectangles

Question

I'm looking for an algorithm to detect if two rectangles intersect (one at an arbitrary angle, the other with only vertical/horizontal lines).

Testing if a corner of one is in the other ALMOST works. It fails if the rectangles form a cross-like shape.

It seems like a good idea to avoid using slopes of the lines, which would require special cases for vertical lines.

Answer 1

I have a simplier method of my own, if we have 2 rectangles:

R1 = (min_x1, max_x1, min_y1, max_y1)

R2 = (min_x2, max_x2, min_y2, max_y2)

They overlap if and only if:

Overlap = (max_x1 > min_x2) and (max_x2 > min_x1) and (max_y1 > min_y2) and (max_y2 > min_y1)

You can do it for 3D boxes too, actually it works for any number of dimensions.

Answer 2

Well, the brute force method is to walk the edges of the horizontal rectangle and check each point along the edge to see if it falls on or in the other rectangle.

The mathematical answer is to form equations describing each edge of both rectangles. Now you can simply find if any of the four lines from rectangle A intersect any of the lines of rectangle B, which should be a simple (fast) linear equation solver.

-Adam

Answer 3

Another way to do the test which is slightly faster than using the separating axis test, is to use the winding numbers algorithm (on quadrants only - not angle-summation which is horrifically slow) on each vertex of either rectangle (arbitrarily chosen). If any of the vertices have a non-zero winding number, the two rectangles overlap.

This algorithm is somewhat more long-winded than the separating axis test, but is faster because it only require a half-plane test if edges are crossing two quadrants (as opposed to up to 32 tests using the separating axis method)

The algorithm has the further advantage that it can be used to test overlap of any polygon (convex or concave). As far as I know, the algorithm only works in 2D space.

Answer 4

Check to see if any of the lines from one rectangle intersect any of the lines from the other. Naive line segment intersection is easy to code up.

If you need more speed, there are advanced algorithms for line segment intersection (sweep-line). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_segment_intersection

Answer 5

One solution is to use something called a No Fit Polygon. This polygon is calculated from the two polygons (conceptually by sliding one around the other) and it defines the area for which the polygons overlap given their relative offset. Once you have this NFP then you simply have to do an inclusion test with a point given by the relative offset of the two polygons. This inclusion test is quick and easy but you do have to create the NFP first.

Have a search for No Fit Polygon on the web and see if you can find an algorithm for convex polygons (it gets MUCH more complex if you have concave polygons). If you can't find anything then email me at howard dot J dot may gmail dot com

Answer 6

This is the conventional method, go line by line and check whether the lines are intersecting. This is the code in MATLAB.

C1 = [0, 0];    % Centre of rectangle 1 (x,y)
C2 = [1, 1];    % Centre of rectangle 2 (x,y)
W1 = 5; W2 = 3; % Widths of rectangles 1 and 2
H1 = 2; H2 = 3; % Heights of rectangles 1 and 2
% Define the corner points of the rectangles using the above
R1 = [C1(1) + [W1; W1; -W1; -W1]/2, C1(2) + [H1; -H1; -H1; H1]/2];
R2 = [C2(1) + [W2; W2; -W2; -W2]/2, C2(2) + [H2; -H2; -H2; H2]/2];

R1 = [R1 ; R1(1,:)] ;
R2 = [R2 ; R2(1,:)] ;

plot(R1(:,1),R1(:,2),'r')
hold on
plot(R2(:,1),R2(:,2),'b')


%% lines of Rectangles 
L1 = [R1(1:end-1,:) R1(2:end,:)] ;
L2 = [R2(1:end-1,:) R2(2:end,:)] ;
%% GEt intersection points
P = zeros(2,[]) ;
count = 0 ;
for i = 1:4
    line1 = reshape(L1(i,:),2,2) ;
    for j = 1:4
        line2 = reshape(L2(j,:),2,2) ;
        point = InterX(line1,line2) ;
        if ~isempty(point)
            count = count+1 ;
            P(:,count) = point ;
        end
    end
end
%%
if ~isempty(P)
    fprintf('Given rectangles intersect at %d points:\n',size(P,2))
    plot(P(1,:),P(2,:),'*k')
end

the function InterX can be downloaded from: https://in.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/22441-curve-intersections?focused=5165138&tab=function