Circle-Rectangle collision detection (intersection)

Question

How can I tell whether a circle and a rectangle intersect in 2D Euclidean space? (i.e. classic 2D geometry)

Answer 1

I've a method which avoids the expensive pythagoras if not necessary - ie. when bounding boxes of the rectangle and the circle do not intersect.

And it'll work for non-euclidean too:

class Circle {
 // create the bounding box of the circle only once
 BBox bbox;

 public boolean intersect(BBox b) {
    // test top intersect
    if (lat > b.maxLat) {
        if (lon < b.minLon)
            return normDist(b.maxLat, b.minLon) <= normedDist;
        if (lon > b.maxLon)
            return normDist(b.maxLat, b.maxLon) <= normedDist;
        return b.maxLat - bbox.minLat > 0;
    }

    // test bottom intersect
    if (lat < b.minLat) {
        if (lon < b.minLon)
            return normDist(b.minLat, b.minLon) <= normedDist;
        if (lon > b.maxLon)
            return normDist(b.minLat, b.maxLon) <= normedDist;
        return bbox.maxLat - b.minLat > 0;
    }

    // test middle intersect
    if (lon < b.minLon)
        return bbox.maxLon - b.minLon > 0;
    if (lon > b.maxLon)
        return b.maxLon - bbox.minLon > 0;
    return true;
  }
}

• minLat,maxLat can be replaced with minY,maxY and the same for minLon, maxLon: replace it with minX, maxX
• normDist ist just a bit faster method then the full distance calculation. E.g. without the square-root in euclidean space (or without a lot of other stuff for haversine): dLat=(lat-circleY); dLon=(lon-circleX); normed=dLat*dLat+dLon*dLon. Of course if you use that normDist method you'll need to do create a normedDist = dist*dist; for the circle

See the full BBox and Circle code of my GraphHopper project.