Pythagorean-Hodograph B-Spline Curves
  We introduce the new class of planar Pythagorean-Hodograph (PH) B-Spline curves. They can be seen as a generalization of the well-known class of planar Pythagorean-Hodograph (PH) B\'ezier curves, presented by R. Farouki and T. Sakkalis in 1990, including the latter ones as special cases. Pythagorean-Hodograph B-Spline curves are non-uniform parametric B-Spline curves whose arc-length is a B-Spline function as well. An important consequence of this special property is that the offsets of Pythagorean-Hodograph B-Spline curves are non-uniform rational B-Spline (NURBS) curves. Thus, although Pythagorean-Hodograph B-Spline curves have fewer degrees of freedom than general B-Spline curves of the same degree, they offer unique advantages for computer-aided design and manufacturing, robotics, motion control, path planning, computer graphics, animation, and related fields. After providing a general definition for this new class of planar parametric curves, we present useful formulae for their construction, discuss their remarkable attractive properties and give some examples of their practical use. 
Gudrun Albrecht, Carolina Vittoria Beccari, Jean-Charles Canonne,   Lucia Romani
math.NA