Distributed least-squares progressive iterative approximation for blending curves and surfaces

Abstract

Least-squares progressive iterative approximation (LSPIA) is an effective tool for fitting data points with curves and surfaces in CAD/CAM, due to its intuitive geometric meaning and its suitability for handling mass data. However, the classic LSPIA method for blending curves and surfaces has a slow convergence rate and takes a long CPU execution time, since the spectral radius of its iteration matrix is near to 1. To achieve a reduction in CPU execution time, this paper presents a distributed least-squares progressive iterative approximation (DLSPIA) method by dividing the collocation matrix into some blocks, which are called processors. The proposed method distributes the computation of the control points progressively in a way that each processor is responsible for a block of the whole point set. Combining the information obtained from the previous processors with that of the current processor, the DLSPIA method can progressively and quickly approximate the least-squares fitting result of the original data set block by block via distributed computation. And the algorithm converges within a finite number of iterations. Furthermore, the iterative formulae for blending surface fitting are expressed in matrix form, which can avoid the computation of the matrix Kronecker product to reduce the CPU execution time. Several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method compared with the previous methods.