Multidimensional curve fitting to unorganized data points by nonlinear minimization (Q1344356)

A method for generating a piecewise smooth parametric curve from a set of unordered and error-filled data points with prescribed end points is presented [see the authors, Proc. 10th Int. Conf. Computer Graphics, 535- 543 (1992)]. The standard regularization method for univariate functions is modified for multidimensional parametric functions. The resulting nonlinear minimization problem is then solved by successive quadratic programming. Although only bivariate examples are presented, the method can be applied to higher-dimensional curves without any modifications.