The problem of finding geodesics of a surface is a topic of Differential Geometry and Tensor Calculus. Traditionally, by means of analytical manipulation, the problem originally put in terms of length of a line is restated into a set of coupled partial differential equations of difficult solution. Complexity theory proposes the reverse way of viewing nature, first stating simple local rules that elementary agents must follow, and then from the interactions at the local level, to predict the behavior of the whole. In this paper a local rule based on the Huygens Principle is proposed that can be used to find geodesics of any surface. By using the rule, problems once considered difficult can be solved in an intuitive way.
Geodesics; Cellular Automata; Descriptive Geometry
