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JuliaGeo / Geodesy.jl

Work with points defined in various coordinate systems.
MIT License
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NED coordinates #69

Open jleny opened 3 years ago

jleny commented 3 years ago

Hi,

Would it make sense to add NED to this package in addition to ENU? North East Down is a more standard convention in aerospace engineering and that would make interfacing with some other projects smoother.

c42f commented 3 years ago

Technically this should be quite easy - you could add a NED type and NEDfromENU / ENUfromNED as simple permutations / sign change relative to ENU, and then all the other transformations would automatically be possible via composition. (some compositions could optionally be predefined for convenience)

I don't exactly love the proliferation of different coordinate types we have in this package but I also don't want to get too hung up on that. Do you think there's value in distinguishing between ENU and NED at the type level for your use cases?

jleny commented 3 years ago

Matlab's mapping toolbox has NED in addition to ENU, whereas the aerospace toolbox only seems to mention NED. I work on navigation systems, where NED is almost universally used over ENU.

There is no fundamental issue with implementing a NED type in higher-level applications every time it is needed, but I feel it would be more natural to have it here at the coordinate system level, on equal footing with ENU.

I was initially thinking of just duplicating all the ENU code, but indeed this could be done via composition if you prefer. If you want I can take a shot at it when I find some time.

andyferris commented 3 years ago

If you want I can take a shot at it when I find some time.

Yes, that would be great.