Envelope computation in the plane by approximate implicitization (Q429759)

The computation of envelopes of a family of planar functions is an important problem in many areas. The paper under review provides an efficient computational algorithm for solving this problem in the case that the given family of functions is a rational family of rational curves. The idea is based on an implicit representation of the envelope and an approximate implicitization technique for computing this representation. The overall result is then a piecewise algebraic approximation of a low degree whose performance is illustrated via a number of examples.