Problem using reckon function

In the documentation for reckon, it states that one of the accepted input formats is

[latout,lonout] = reckon(lat,lon,arclen,az,ellipsoid,units)

calculates positions on the specified ellipsoid with lat, lon, az, latout, and lonout in the specified angle units.

The issue is when I use a reference ellipsoid such as referenceEllipsoid('earth'), the units for arclen appear to automatically default to meters. Even when I put 'degrees' as an additional constraint, it treats the arclen as meters.

As an example:

earth = referenceEllipsoid('earth')
[latout,lonout] = reckon(34,-118,65,325,earth,'degrees')

gives me an output of 34.0005, -118.0004. For a 65 degree arc this is clearly incorrect. When I remove the referenceEllipsoid and try reckon() without it, it works fine.

Maybe I am just using the function wrong, any ideas?

Answer 1

[Shubham Srivastava]

For calculating positions using the reference ellipsoid object, the 'arclen' must be expressed in the same unit of length as the semimajor axis of the ellipsoid. In the above case it is meter.

When using the reckon function without any ellipsoid argument, arclen can be specified in degrees.

Regards,

Shubham