Optimal Arc-Spline Approximation with Detecting Straight Sections

We present a method for approximating an open polygonal curve by a smooth arc spline with respect to a user-specified maximum tolerance. Additionally, straight sections of the polygon are detected resulting in a finite set of pairwise disjoint line segments. The proposed algorithm guarantees that the resulting arc spline does not exceed the tolerance and that sections of the pre-computed lines are part of the solution. Subject to these conditions we obtain the minimally possible number of circular arcs and line segments. Note that in contrast to existing approaches, we do not restrict the breakpoints of the arc spline to original points but compute them automatically.