On Shortest Paths Between Two Convex Polyhedra

Excerpt from On Shortest Paths Between Two Convex Polyhedra

As a matter of fact, the problem we face here can be formulated as that of calculating all possible sequences of edges of B which can be crossed by shortest paths from any point on e to any point on e'. If we had all these sequences available, then we could unfold each such sequence C in turn so as to make the middle portion of the corresponding candidate path into a straight segment, and then find the shortest path from so to Z constrained to contain such a segment, a task which can be accomplished in much the same way as was done in Sections 3 and 4.