Curved path approaches and dynamic interpolation

The method of splines was applied to the control of linearizable dynamical systems such that an affine invariant cost functional (total energy) is minimized subject to discrete path constraints. CAGD (computer-aided geometric design) and optimal control methods were applied to derive reference trajectories for comparison with the dynamic results, and to determine intercept times for the waypoints. An acceptable trajectory was generated by the application of these methods to a difficult aircraft approach problem. It is suggested that a combination of finite element and spline techniques should eventually be suitable for solutions of practical dynamic interpolation problems considered in the literature.<<ETX>>