On the approximation order of a space data-dependent PH quintic Hermite interpolation scheme

Dealing with Pythagorean Hodograph quintic Hermite interpolation in the space, we deepen the analysis of the so-called CC criterion proposed in Farouki et al. (2008) for fixing the two free angular parameters characterizing the set of possible solutions, which remarkably influence the shape of the chosen interpolant. Such criterion is easy to implement, guarantees the reproduction of the standard cubic Hermite interpolant when it is a PH curve and usually allows the selection of interpolants with good shape. Here we first rigorously prove that the PH interpolant it selects doesn't depend on the unit pure vector chosen for representing its hodograph in quaternion form. Then we evaluate the corresponding interpolation scheme from a theoretical point of view, proving with the help of symbolic computation that it has fourth approximation order. A selection of experiments related to the spline implementation of the method confirms our analysis. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.