A local $C^2$ Hermite interpolation scheme with PH quintic splines for 3D data streams

Abstract

The construction of smooth spatial paths with Pythagorean-hodograph (PH) quintic spline biarcs is proposed. To facilitate real-time computations of C 2 PH quintic splines, an efficient local data stream interpolation algorithm is introduced. Each spline segment interpolates second and first order Hermite data at the initial and final endpoint, respectively. In the spline extension of the scheme a C 2 smooth connection between successive spline segments is obtained by taking the locally required secondorder derivative information from the previous segment. Consequently, the data stream spline interpolant is globally C 2 continuous and can be constructed for arbitrary C 1 Hermite data configurations. A simple and effective selection of the free parameters that arise in the interpolation problem is proposed. The developed theoretical analysis proves the fourth approximation order of the local scheme while a selection of numerical examples confirms the same accuracy of its spline extension. In addition, the performances of the algorithm are also validated by considering its application to point stream interpolation with automatically generated first-order derivative information.