A note on quintic polynomial approximation of generalized Cornu spiral segments

In two recent papers Cripps et al. (2010) [3], and Cross and Cripps (2012) [2], quintic polynomial approximations of the generalized Cornu spirals have been studied by considering G2 continuity and G3 continuity at the end points respectively. The quintic curve is constructed so that the maximum curvature error is within the specified tolerance. In this paper, we provide corrections to the typing errors in Cross and Cripps (2012) [2], and propose a simpler and more efficient method for the G2-constrained quintic polynomial approximation where the G2 conditions are always satisfied by four free variables. Also, we introduce a new error measure of the maximum curvature error, which can greatly reduce the computational time when looking for the solution. Numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the new measure.