B\'ezier curves that are close to elastica

We study the problem of identifying those cubic B\'ezier curves that are close in the L2 norm to planar elastic curves. The problem arises in design situations where the manufacturing process produces elastic curves; these are difficult to work with in a digital environment. We seek a sub-class of special B\'ezier curves as a proxy. We identify an easily computable quantity, which we call the lambda-residual, that accurately predicts a small L2 distance. We then identify geometric criteria on the control polygon that guarantee that a B\'ezier curve has lambda-residual below 0.4, which effectively implies that the curve is within 1 percent of its arc-length to an elastic curve in the L2 norm. Finally we give two projection algorithms that take an input B\'ezier curve and adjust its length and shape, whilst keeping the end-points and end-tangent angles fixed, until it is close to an elastic curve.Comment: 13 pages, 15 figure

A New Four Point Circular-Invariant Corner-Cutting Subdivision for Curve Design

A 4-point nonlinear corner-cutting subdivision scheme is established. It is induced from a special C-shaped biarc circular spline structure. The scheme is circular-invariant and can be effectively applied to 2-dimensional (2D) data sets that are locally convex. The scheme is also extended adaptively to non-convex data. Explicit examples are demonstrated

Fairing arc spline and designing by using cubic bézier spiral segments

This paper considers how to smooth three kinds of G 1 biarc models, the C-, S-, and J-shaped transitions, by replacing their parts with spiral segments using a single cubic Bézier curve. Arc spline is smoothed to G 2continuity. Use of a single curve rather than two has the benefit because designers and implementers have fewer entities to be concerned. Arc spline is planar, tangent continuous, piecewise curves made of circular arcs and straight line segments. It is important in manufacturing industries because of its use in the cutting paths for numerically controlled cutting machinery. Main contribution of this paper is to minimize the number of curvature extrema in cubic transition curves for further use in industrial applications such as non-holonomic robot path planning, highways or railways, and spur gear tooth designing