A Proposal for the Automatic Computation of Envelopes of Families of Plane Curves

Abstract

The idea of envelope of a family of plane curves is an elementary notion in differential geometry. As such, its implementation in dynamic geometry environments is quite universal (Cabri, The Geometer’s Sketchpad, Cinderella, GeoGebra,...). Nevertheless, most of these programs return, when computing certain envelopes, both some spurious solutions and the curves that truly fit in the intuitive definition of envelope. The precise distinction between spurious and genuine parts has not been made before: This paper proposes such distinction in an algorithmic way, ready for its implementation in interactive geometry systems, allowing a finer classification of the different parts resulting from the current, advanced approach to envelope computation and, thus, yielding a more precise output, free from extraneous components.