“…There has recently been considerable interest in using Pythagorean-hodograph (PH) curves to specify paths for swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or other autonomous or remotely-operated vehicles [1,3,4,6,20,21,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,33]. A polynomial PH curve r(ξ) = (x(ξ), y(ξ), z(ξ)) incorporates a special algebraic structure [9], ensuring that the components of the hodograph (derivative) r ′ (ξ) = (x ′ (ξ), y ′ (ξ), z ′ (ξ)) satisfy a Pythagorean condition -i.e., x ′2 (ξ)+y ′2 (ξ)+z ′2 (ξ) is equal to the perfect square of a single polynomial.…”