An Obstacle-Avoiding Minimum Variation B-Spline Problem

We study the problem of computing a planar curve, restricted to lie between two given polygonal chains, such that the integral of the square of arc-length derivative of curvature along the curve is minimized. We introduce the Minimum Variation B-spline problem which is a linearly constrained optimization problem over curves defined by Bspline functions only. An empirical investigation indicates that this problem has one unique solution among all uniform quartic B-spline functions. Furthermore, we prove that, for any B-spline function, the convexity properties of the problem are preserved subject to a scaling and translation of the knot sequence defining the B-spline.