Two ways to construct a smooth piecewise rational curve

Bézier points connection matrix continuous piecewise cubic polynomial piecewise cubic rationals piecewise general rationals smooth piecewise rational curve

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Interpolation in approximation theory (41A05) Approximation by rational functions (41A20)

Review text

The subject of this paper are two ways of constructing a smooth piecewise rational curve. The first is called the analytic and the second the geometric approach. In Section 2 the two approaches are described for a continuous piecewise cubic polynomial \(S:\mathbb{R}\to\mathbb{R}^ s\), \(s\geq 2\). The particular interest is in curves which look smooth where the smoothness is defined as geometrical continuity of order 2 (in short: \(G^ 2\)), if the curve has a continuous unit tangent and a continuous curvature at all points where \(S'\) is non zero. The analytic approach for cubic polynomials then looks as follows: \(S\) is assumed to have knots at the integers, i.e., for each \(i\in\mathbb{Z}\), \(S\mid [i,i+1]\) is a cubic polynomial. For \(S\) to be in \(G^ 2\) at \(i\in\mathbb{Z}\) it can be shown to be necessary and sufficient that \[ (S'(i^ +),S(i^ +))^ T = A_ i(S'(i^ -),S(i^ -))^ T \] where \(A_ i=\bigl( {{\beta_ i} \atop {\gamma_ i}} {0 \atop {\beta^ 2_ i}}\bigr)\), for some \(\beta_ i>0\) and some \(\gamma_ i\in\mathbb{R}\), is the so called connection matrix. If \(\gamma_ i\geq 0\) for all \(i\in\mathbb{Z}\), it has been shown that \(S\) can be written uniquely in the form \(S(t)=\sum^ \infty_{i=-\infty} P^ i N_ i(t)\) where \(P^ i\in\mathbb{R}^ s\) and \(N_ i: \mathbb{R}\to\mathbb{R}\) has support on \([i,i+4]\) with \(\sum^ \infty_{i=-\infty} N_ i=1\). In addition to this further properties of piecewise cubic polynomial curves are discussed in Section 2. In the geometric approach the curve is assumed to be of the form \(S(t)=p_ i(t-1)\), \(i\leq t\leq i+1\), \(i\in\mathbb{Z}\) where \[ p_ i(t)=b^ o_ 0(1-t)^ 3+ b^ i_ 1 3t(1- t)^ 2+ b^ i_ 2 3t^ 2(1-t)+ b^ i_ 3 t^ 3, \qquad 0\leq t\leq 1, \] \(i\in \mathbb{Z}\), for points \(b^ i_ 0, b^ i_ 1, b^ i_ 2, b^ i_ 3\in \mathbb{R}^ s\) which are called Bézier points. Starting with arbitrary points \(P^ i\in\mathbb{R}^ s\) and numbers \(\beta_ i, \gamma_ i, \mu_ i>0\), \(i\in\mathbb{Z}\) with \(\lambda_ i\mu_ i=\beta^ 2_ i\) it is shown how the Bézier points \(b^ i_ 0, b^ i_ 1, b^ i_ 2, b^ i_ 3\in\mathbb{R}^ s\), \(i\in\mathbb{Z}\), can be constructed such that \(S: \mathbb{R}\to \mathbb{R}^ s\) can also be represented in the form \(S(t)=\sum^ \infty _{i=-\infty} P^ i N_ i(t)\) where \(N_ i: \mathbb{R}\to\mathbb{R}\) is positive with support on \([i,i+4]\) and \(\sum^ \infty_{i=-\infty} N_ i=1\). It is also shown that \[ (S'(i^ +),S(i^ +))^ T= A_{i+2}(S'(i^ -),S(i^ -))^ T \] where \(A_ i=\bigl( {{\beta_ i} \atop {\gamma_ i}} {0 \atop {\delta_ i}}\bigr)\) for \(\beta_ i>0\), \(\delta_ i>0\) and \(\gamma_ i>- 2(\beta_ i+\delta_ i)\). To ensure \(S\) to be in \(G^ 2\) one can take \(\delta_ i=\beta^ 2_ i\) and \(\gamma_ i>-2(\beta_ i+\delta_ i)\) which is more general than in the analytic approach. The two approaches can then be extended to piecewise cubic rationals and piecewise general rationals.

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