Approximating the evolution of rotating moving regions using Bezier curves

Abstract The region interpolation methods proposed in the moving objects databases literature impose restrictions that can have a significant impact on the representation of the evolution of moving regions, in particular, when a rotation occurs between two observations. In this paper, we propose a data model for moving regions that allows moving segments to rotate and change their length during their evolution between two observations and uses quadratic Bezier curves to define the trajectories of their endpoints. This introduces a new class of moving regions called rotating moving regions (rmregions). We present algorithms for operations involving rmregions and we propose a strategy to allow different interpolation methods to be used in the context of moving objects databases by approximating the interpolations they create using rmregions. We demonstrate our strategy using a reference implementation and compare results obtained when using the strategy presented here and the region interpolation methods and the spatiotemporal operations proposed in the state-of-the-art. Experimental results show that our strategy can be used to complement the region interpolation methods proposed in the moving objects databases literature.