How to generate equispaced interpolating values

Question

I have a list of (x,y) values that are not uniformly spaced. Here is the archive used in this question.

I am able to interpolate between the values but what I get ar

Answer 1

Let's first consider a simple case. Suppose your data looked like the blue line, below.

If you wanted to select equidistant points that were r distance apart, then there would be some critical value for r where the cusp at (1,2) is the first equidistant point.

If you wanted points that were greater than this critical distance apart, then the first equidistant point would jump from (1,2) to some place very different -- depicted by the intersection of the green arc with the blue line. The change is not gradual.

This toy case suggests that a tiny change in the parameter r can have a radical, discontinuous affect on the solution.

It also suggests that you must know the location of the ith equidistant point before you can determine the location of the (i+1)-th equidistant point.

So it appears an iterative solution is required:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import math

x, y = np.genfromtxt('data', unpack=True, skip_header=1)
# find lots of points on the piecewise linear curve defined by x and y
M = 1000
t = np.linspace(0, len(x), M)
x = np.interp(t, np.arange(len(x)), x)
y = np.interp(t, np.arange(len(y)), y)
tol = 1.5
i, idx = 0, [0]
while i < len(x):
    total_dist = 0
    for j in range(i+1, len(x)):
        total_dist += math.sqrt((x[j]-x[j-1])**2 + (y[j]-y[j-1])**2)
        if total_dist > tol:
            idx.append(j)
            break
    i = j+1

xn = x[idx]
yn = y[idx]
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(x, y, '-')
ax.scatter(xn, yn, s=50)
ax.set_aspect('equal')
plt.show()

Note: I set the aspect ratio to 'equal' to make it more apparent that the points are equidistant.

Answer 2

Expanding on the answer by @Christian K., here's how to do this for higher dimensional data with scipy.interpolate.interpn. Let's say we want to resample to 10 equally-spaced points:

import numpy as np
import scipy
# Assuming that 'data' is rows x dims (where dims is the dimensionality)
diffs = data[1:, :] - data[:-1, :]
dist = np.linalg.norm(diffs, axis=1)
u = np.cumsum(dist)
u = np.hstack([[0], u])
t = np.linspace(0, u[-1], 10)
resampled = scipy.interpolate.interpn((u,), pts, t)

Answer 3

The following script will interpolate points with a equal step of x_max - x_min / len(x) = 0.04438

import numpy as np
from scipy.interpolate import interp1d
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

data = np.loadtxt('data.txt')
x = data[:,0]
y = data[:,1]

f = interp1d(x, y)
x_new = np.linspace(np.min(x), np.max(x), x.shape[0])
y_new = f(x_new)

plt.plot(x,y,'o', x_new, y_new, '*r')
plt.show()

Answer 4

It IS possible to generate equidistant points along the curve. But there must be more definition of what you want for a real answer. Sorry, but the code I've written for this task is in MATLAB, but I can describe the general ideas. There are three possibilities.

First, are the points to be truly equidistant from the neighbors in terms of a simple Euclidean distance? To do so would involve finding the intersection at any point on the curve with a circle of a fixed radius. Then just step along the curve.

Next, if you intend distance to mean distance along the curve itself, if the curve is a piecewise linear one, the problem is again easy to do. Just step along the curve, since distance on a line segment is easy to measure.

Finally, if you intend for the curve to be a cubic spline, again this is not incredibly difficult, but is a bit more work. Here the trick is to:

• Compute the piecewise linear arclength from point to point along the curve. Call it t.
• Generate a pair of cubic splines, x(t), y(t).
• Differentiate x and y as functions of t. Since these are cubic segments, this is easy. The derivative functions will be piecewise quadratic.
• Use an ode solver to move along the curve, integrating the differential arclength function. In MATLAB, ODE45 worked nicely.

Thus, one integrates

sqrt((x')^2 + (y')^2)

Again, in MATLAB, ODE45 can be set to identify those locations where the function crosses certain specified points.

If your MATLAB skills are up to the task, you can look at the code in interparc for more explanation. It is reasonably well commented code.

Answer 5

Convert your xy-data to a parametrized curve, i.e. calculate all all distances between the points and generate the coordinates on the curve by cumulative summing. Then interpolate the x- and y-coordinates independently with respect to the new coordinates.

import numpy as np
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt

data = '''0.615   5.349
    0.615   5.413
    0.617   6.674
    0.617   6.616
    0.63    7.418
    0.642   7.809
    0.648   8.04
    0.673   8.789
    0.695   9.45
    0.712   9.825
    0.734   10.265
    0.748   10.516
    0.764   10.782
    0.775   10.979
    0.783   11.1
    0.808   11.479
    0.849   11.951
    0.899   12.295
    0.951   12.537
    0.972   12.675
    1.038   12.937
    1.098   13.173
    1.162   13.464
    1.228   13.789
    1.294   14.126
    1.363   14.518
    1.441   14.969
    1.545   15.538
    1.64    16.071
    1.765   16.7
    1.904   17.484
    2.027   18.36
    2.123   19.235
    2.149   19.655
    2.172   20.096
    2.198   20.528
    2.221   20.945
    2.265   21.352
    2.312   21.76
    2.365   22.228
    2.401   22.836
    2.477   23.804'''

data = np.array([line.split() for line in data.split('\n')],dtype=float)

x,y = data.T
xd = np.diff(x)
yd = np.diff(y)
dist = np.sqrt(xd**2+yd**2)
u = np.cumsum(dist)
u = np.hstack([[0],u])

t = np.linspace(0,u.max(),10)
xn = np.interp(t, u, x)
yn = np.interp(t, u, y)

f = plt.figure()
ax = f.add_subplot(111)
ax.set_aspect('equal')
ax.plot(x,y,'o', alpha=0.3)
ax.plot(xn,yn,'ro', markersize=8)
ax.set_xlim(0,5)