Any dimension polygonal approximation based on equal errors principle

In this paper, we present an algorithm based on equal errors principle, which solves the general version of polygonal approximation problem (GPA). The approximation nodes of GPA can be selected anywhere on the original polygonal curve, while the “classical” (usually used) polygonal approximation problem (PA) demands the vertices to be a subset of the original polygon vertices. Although the proposed algorithm does not guarantee global minimum distortion, in many cases almost optimal solutions are achieved. Moreover, it is very flexible on changes of error criteria and on curve dimension yielding an alternative and in many cases approximations with lower error (by relaxing the simplification constraint) than the optimal PA methods with about the same computation cost.