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Vectorized Solution to Rotate Multiple Points each at a Different Angle

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I want to rotate a matrix of points, i.e. column vectors. However, I want to rotate each vector in the matrix by a different angle. For example:
pointMatrix = [v1,v2,v3,v4]; %vi is a column vector
rotateAngles = [10,20,30,40]; %degrees
Say I want to rotate these points around the z-axis. Therefore, for one point I could do something like the following:
Rz = [[cos(rotateAngles(1)) -sin(rotateAngles(1)) 0];...
[sin(rotateAngles(1)) cos(rotateAngles(1)) 0];...
[ 0 0 1]];
v1Rotated = Rz*v1;
Is there a non-loop way to rotate all the vectors in my pointMatrix by each one's unique rotation angle? Something like this...
allRotatedPoints = superRotationMatrix*pointMatrix;
where the superRotationMatrix "magically" rotates each column by the corresponding angle.
Thanks!

Accepted Answer

Teja Muppirala
Teja Muppirala on 8 Mar 2013
Edited: Teja Muppirala on 8 Mar 2013
This vectorized solution uses complex exponentials and works about 2 orders of magnitude faster for large vectors.
M = exp(rotateAngles*1i) .* ([1 1i 0]*pointMatrix);
allRotatedPoints = [real(M); imag(M); pointMatrix(3,:)];
  1 Comment
Fvieira
Fvieira on 30 Apr 2021
Notice that this works for 3 coordinate vectors (p = x,y,z).
For 2d one must consider this variation:
M = exp(rotateAngles*1i) .* ([1 1i]*pointMatrix);
allRotatedPoints = [real(M); imag(M)].'
Here is a full example that I did based on Muppirala's answer regarding some small details (angle in radians, for example):
v1 = [1;1]; v2 = [2;2]; v3 = [3;0]; v4 = [4;2];
pointMatrix = [v1 v2 v3 v4] %vi is a column vector
rotateAngles = [90 90 90 90] *pi/180 % radians
M = exp(rotateAngles*1i) .* ([1 1i]*pointMatrix);
allRotatedPoints = [real(M); imag(M)].'
pointMatrix = pointMatrix.'
figure(1)
plot(pointMatrix(:,1),pointMatrix(:,2),'o')
axis([-5 5 -5 5])
grid on, hold on
plot(allRotatedPoints(:,1),allRotatedPoints(:,2),'x')
Here are the plots: Circles are the points, crosses are them rotated by 90 degrees.

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More Answers (1)

Matt J
Matt J on 7 Mar 2013
Edited: Matt J on 7 Mar 2013
You can use MTIMESX on the file exchange
If your superRotationMatrix is 3x3xN and you reshape your pointMatrix to be 3x1xN, then
mtimesx(superRotationMatrix,pointMatrix)
will give you the rotated vectors in a 3x1xN output.

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