Algorithms for projecting a point onto the convex hull spanned by a set of vectors Given a set of vectors $V = \{ \mathbf{v}_1, \ldots, \mathbf{v}_n \} \subset \mathbb{R}^d$, I want to project a point $\mathbf{x}_0 \in \mathbb{R}^d$ onto the convex hull $\text{conv}(V)$ of the vectors in $V$.
I know this is a quadratic program, to find $\mathbf{z}^*$ that minimizes $\frac{1}{2}\|\mathbf{x}_0 - \mathbf{z}\|^2$ subject to $\mathbf{z} \in \text{conv}(V)$.
I also know that $\text{conv}(V)$ is a polytope and expressible as a set $S = \{ \mathbf{x} : A\mathbf{x} \le \mathbf{b} \}$.
However, I don't know how to derive the constraint matrix and constraint vector $(A,\mathbf{b})$ from the vectors in $V$.
Secondarily, I'm wondering if there are simple and fast algorithms to solve this problem. The number of vectors in $V$ will be less than $250$ and the dimensionality will be less than $50$.
And finally, I am hoping to express the solution $\mathbf{z}^* = \text{Proj}(\mathbf{x}_0)$ in something like barycentric coordinates with respect to the vectors in $V$. In other words, I'd like to express $\mathbf{z}^*$ as the vector $(\alpha_1, \ldots, \alpha_n)$ such that $\mathbf{z}^* = \sum_i \alpha_i \mathbf{v}_i$ with $\alpha_i \ge 0$ and $\sum_i \alpha_i = 1$. Given that the set $V$ won't be linearly independent (because $n > d$), I know that such barycentric coordinates are not well defined. I'm hoping to use something akin to a least norm solution $\|\alpha\|^2$ here.
 A: You do not need to express the convex hull explicitly as a system of inequalities $\mathbf{A x} \leq \mathbf{b}$. The convex hull, by definition, is 
$$
\operatorname{conv}(\mathbf{v}_1, \dots, \mathbf{v}_m) = \left \{
 \sum_{i=1}^m w_i \mathbf{v}_i : \sum_{i=1}^m w_i=1, w_i \geq 0
\right\}
$$
Therefore, the projection onto the convex hull of a vector $\mathbf{y}$ can be computed from the solution of
$$
\min_{\mathbf{w}} \quad \left \|  \sum_{i=1}^m w_i \mathbf{v}_i - \mathbf{y} \right \|_2^2 \quad \text{s.t.} \quad \sum_{i=1}^m w_i=1, w_i \geq 0
$$
The vector $\mathbf{w}$ contains the barycentric coordinates of the projection. I am not aware of a specialized algorithm of computing the optimal $\mathbf{w}$, but any QP solver can do so. 
A simple solution method which you can implement yourself can be obtained from a fast projected gradient algorithm ,such as FISTA, and remembering that the constraints are exactly the unit simplex, and there is a simple $O(m \log m)$ algorithm for projecting a point onto the unit simplex. Moreover, you also have the well-known Mirror Descent algorithm for optimizing over the unit simplex, which can be quite fast in practice.
