title: Project GPS coordinates to Euclidean space
body: <p>There are a lot of similar questions but I can't get a clear answer out of them. So, I want to represent latitude and longitude in a 2D space such that I can calculate the distances if necessary.</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><p>There is the <strong>equirectangular approach</strong>  which can calculate the distances but this is not exactly what I want.</p></li>
  <li><p>There is the <strong>UTM</strong> but it seems there are many zones and letters. So the distance should take into consideration the changing of zone which is not trivial.</p></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I want to have a representation such that i can deal with x,y as numbers in Euclidean space and perform the standard distance formula on them without multiplying with the diameter of Earth every time I need to calculate the distance between two points.</p>
  
  <p>Is there anything in Matlab that can change <code>lat/long</code> to <code>x,y</code> in Euclidean space?</p>