Smoothing of Piecewise Linear Paths

We present an anytime-capable fast deterministic greedy algorithm for smoothing piecewise linear paths consisting of connected linear segments. With this method, path points with only a small influence on path geometry (i.e. aligned or nearly aligned points) are successively removed. Due to the removal of less important path points, the computational and memory requirements of the paths are reduced and traversing the path is accelerated. Our algorithm can be used in many different applications, e.g. sweeping, path finding, programming-by-demonstration in a virtual environment, or 6D CNC milling. The algorithm handles points with positional and orientational coordinates of arbitrary dimension.