Minimal Acceleration Hermite Curves

This gem shows how a curve with minimal acceleration can be obtained using Hermite splines [Hearn04]. Acceleration is higher in the bends and therefore this type of curve is a minimal bending curve. This type of curve can be useful for subdivision surfaces when it is required that the surface has this property, which assures that the surface is as smooth as possible. A similar approach for Bezier curves and subdivision can be found in [Overveld97]. It could also be very useful for camera movements [Vlachos01] since it allows that both the position and the direction of the camera can be set for the curve. Moreover, we show how several such curves can be connected in order to achieve continuity between the curve segments.