MINVO Basis: Finding Simplexes with Minimum Volume Enclosing Polynomial Curves

Outer polyhedral representations of a given polynomial curve are extensively exploited in computer graphics rendering, computer gaming, path planning for robots, and finite element simulations. B\'ezier curves (which use the Bernstein basis) or B-Splines are a very common choice for these polyhedral representations because their non-negativity and partition-of-unity properties guarantee that each interval of the curve is contained inside the convex hull of its control points. However, the convex hull provided by these bases is not the one with smallest volume, producing therefore undesirable levels of conservatism in all of the applications mentioned above. This paper presents the MINVO basis, a polynomial basis that generates the smallest $n$-simplex that encloses any given $n^\text{th}$-order polynomial curve. The results obtained for $n=3$ show that, for any given $3^{\text{rd}}$-order polynomial curve, the MINVO basis is able to obtain an enclosing simplex whose volume is $2.36$ and $254.9$ times smaller than the ones obtained by the Bernstein and B-Spline bases, respectively. When $n=7$, these ratios increase to $902.7$ and $2.997\cdot10^{21}$, respectively.