Construction of Minkowski Pythagorean hodograph B-spline curves

Following and extending the recent results of Albrecht et al. (2017) for planar Pythagorean hodograph (PH) B-spline curves to the Minkowski 3-space, we introduce a class of Minkowski Pythagorean hodograph (MPH) B-spline curves. The distinguished property of these curves is that the Minkowski norm of their hodograph is a B-spline function. We focus mainly on the clamped case and using Clifford algebra representation we present formulas for their construction. The closed case is also mentioned. Then we solve two practical problems - construction of MPH B-spline curves with control polygon close to a given control polygon, and construction of MPH B-spline curves going through given points. We emphasize symbolic solutions wherever it is possible. The results and approaches are illustrated on several examples. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.