Until recently, almost all of the interactions between objects in virtual 3D worlds have been based on calculations performed using linear algebra. Linear algebra relies heavily on coordinates, however, which can make many geometric programming tasks very specific and complex-often a lot of effort is required to bring about even modest performance enhancements. Although linear algebra is an efficient way to specify low-level computations, it is not a suitable high-level language for geometric programming. Geometric Algebra for Computer Science presents a compelling alternative to the limitations of linear algebra. Geometric algebra, or GA, is a compact, time-effective, and performance-enhancing way to represent the geometry of 3D objects in computer programs. In this book you will find an introduction to GA that will give you a strong grasp of its relationship to linear algebra and its significance for your work. You will learn how to use GA to represent objects and perform geometric operations on them. And you will begin mastering proven techniques for making GA an integral part of your applications in a way that simplifies your code without slowing it down. * The first book on Geometric Algebra for programmers in computer graphics and entertainment computing * Written by leaders in the field providing essential information on this new technique for 3D graphics * This full colour book includes a website with GAViewer, a program to experiment with GA

This useful text offers new insights and solutions for the development of theorems, algorithms and advanced methods for real-time applications across a range of disciplines. Its accessible style is enhanced by examples, figures and experimental analysis.

The author defines “Geometric Algebra Computing” as the geometrically intuitive development of algorithms using geometric algebra with a focus on their efficient implementation, and the goal of this book is to lay the foundations for the widespread use of geometric algebra as a powerful, intuitive mathematical language for engineering applications in academia and industry. The related technology is driven by the invention of conformal geometric algebra as a 5D extension of the 4D projective geometric algebra and by the recent progress in parallel processing, and with the specific conformal geometric algebra there is a growing community in recent years applying geometric algebra to applications in computer vision, computer graphics, and robotics. This book is organized into three parts: in Part I the author focuses on the mathematical foundations; in Part II he explains the interactive handling of geometric algebra; and in Part III he deals with computing technology for high-performance implementations based on geometric algebra as a domain-specific language in standard programming languages such as C++ and OpenCL. The book is written in a tutorial style and readers should gain experience with the associated freely available software packages and applications. The book is suitable for students, engineers, and researchers in computer science, computational engineering, and mathematics.

Geometric algebra (a Clifford Algebra) has been applied to different branches of physics for a long time but is now being adopted by the computer graphics community and is providing exciting new ways of solving 3D geometric problems. The author tackles this complex subject with inimitable style, and provides an accessible and very readable introduction. The book is filled with lots of clear examples and is very well illustrated. Introductory chapters look at algebraic axioms, vector algebra and geometric conventions and the book closes with a chapter on how the algebra is applied to computer graphics.

Geometric Algebra is a very powerful mathematical system for an easy and intuitive treatment of geometry, but the community working with it is still very small. The main goal of this book is to close this gap from a computing perspective in presenting the power of Geometric Algebra Computing for engineering applications and quantum computing. The Power of Geometric Algebra Computing is based on GAALOPWeb, a new user-friendly, web-based tool for the generation of optimized code for different programming languages as well as for the visualization of Geometric Algebra algorithms for a wide range of engineering applications. Key Features: Introduces a new web-based optimizer for Geometric Algebra algorithms Supports many programming languages as well as hardware Covers the advantages of high-dimensional algebras Includes geometrically intuitive support of quantum computing This book includes applications from the fields of computer graphics, robotics and quantum computing and will help students, engineers and researchers interested in really computing with Geometric Algebra.

From the Foreword: "Dietmar Hildenbrand's new book, Introduction to Geometric Algebra Computing, in my view, fills an important gap in Clifford's geometric algebra literature...I can only congratulate the author for the daring simplicity of his novel educational approach taken in this book, consequently combined with hands on computer based exploration. Without noticing, the active reader will thus educate himself in elementary geometric algebra algorithm development, geometrically intuitive, highly comprehensible, and fully optimized." --Eckhard Hitzer, International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan Geometric Algebra is a very powerful mathematical system for an easy and intuitive treatment of geometry, but the community working with it is still very small. The main goal of this book is to close this gap with an introduction to Geometric Algebra from an engineering/computing perspective. This book is intended to give a rapid introduction to computing with Geometric Algebra and its power for geometric modeling. From the geometric objects point of view, it focuses on the most basic ones, namely points, lines and circles. This algebra is called Compass Ruler Algebra, since it is comparable to working with a compass and ruler. The book explores how to compute with these geometric objects, and their geometric operations and transformations, in a very intuitive way. The book follows a top-down approach, and while it focuses on 2D, it is also easily expandable to 3D computations. Algebra in engineering applications such as computer graphics, computer vision and robotics are also covered.

This monograph-like anthology introduces the concepts and framework of Clifford algebra. It provides a rich source of examples of how to work with this formalism. Clifford or geometric algebra shows strong unifying aspects and turned out in the 1960s to be a most adequate formalism for describing different geometry-related algebraic systems as specializations of one "mother algebra" in various subfields of physics and engineering. Recent work shows that Clifford algebra provides a universal and powerful algebraic framework for an elegant and coherent representation of various problems occurring in computer science, signal processing, neural computing, image processing, pattern recognition, computer vision, and robotics.