I'm trying to get a hold on how to work with splines in Eigen, specifically I want do find the value of the spline interpolation and its first and second derivatives in some point. Finding the interpolated value is easy, but when I try to calculate the derivative I get strange values.
I tried following the instructions for the derivatives command in the manual (http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/unsupported/classEigen_1_1Spline.html#af3586ab1929959e0161bfe7da40155c6), and this is my attempt in code:
#include <iostream>
#include <Eigen/Core>
#include <unsupported/Eigen/Splines>
using namespace Eigen;
using namespace std;
double scaling(double x, double min, double max) // for scaling numbers
{
return (x - min)/(max - min);
}
VectorXd scale(VectorXd xvals) // for scaling vectors
{
const double min = xvals.minCoeff();
const double max = xvals.maxCoeff();
for (int k = 0; k < xvals.size(); k++)
xvals(k) = scaling(xvals(k),min,max);
return xvals;
}
int main()
{
typedef Spline<double,1,3> spline;
VectorXd xvals = (VectorXd(4) << 0,1,2,4).finished();
VectorXd yvals = xvals.array().square(); // x^2
spline testspline = SplineFitting<spline>::Interpolate(yvals.transpose(), 3,
scale(xvals).transpose());
cout << "derivative at x = 0: " << testspline.derivatives(0.00,2) << endl;
cout << "derivative at x = 1: " << testspline.derivatives(0.25,2) << endl;
cout << "derivative at x = 2: " << testspline.derivatives(0.50,2) << endl;
cout << "derivative at x = 3: " << testspline.derivatives(0.75,2) << endl;
cout << "derivative at x = 4: " << testspline.derivatives(1.00,2) << endl;
}
it outputs
derivative at x = 0: 0 0 32
derivative at x = 1: 1 8 32
derivative at x = 2: 4 16 32
derivative at x = 3: 9 24 32
derivative at x = 4: 16 32 32
That is, the interpolation is correct (c.f. x = 3), but the derivatives are not, and they are off in a systematic way, so I'm thinking I'm doing something wrong. Since these follow x^2, the derivatives should be 0,2,4,6,8 and the second order derivative should be 2.
Any ideas on how to solve this?
Changing x^2 to x^2 + 1 yields the same derivatives, so that checks out at least. But changing x^2 to x^3 is wrong, but wrong in a slightly different way, output would then be:
derivative at x = 2: 8 48 192
derivative at x = 3: 27 108 288
derivative at x = 4: 64 192 384
Which is wrong, it should be 6, 9, 12.
Also running the x^2 case, but changing he input vector to 0,1,...9 yields the same derivative as using the original input vector, but the second order derivative becomes a steady 200, which too is wrong. I fail to see why the second order derivative should depend on the number of input points.
Solved it. You were very close. All you had to do was scale the derivatives with
1 / (x_max - x_min) (first derivative)1 / (x_max - x_min)^2 (second derivative).TLDR: You normalized the x values to be between 0 and 1 while fitting the spline, but you didn't scale the y values.
Instead of the spline fitting x^2, you actually fitted:
x_norm = (x - x_min) / (x_max - x_min)
y = x_norm**2
So using the chain rule the first derivative of y = x_norm**2 would be 2x / (x_max - x_min) and the second derivative would be 2 / (x_max - x_min)**2.
Full example code:
#include <iostream>
#include <Eigen/Core>
#include <unsupported/Eigen/Splines>
using namespace Eigen;
using namespace std;
VectorXd normalize(const VectorXd &x) {
VectorXd x_norm;
x_norm.resize(x.size());
const double min = x.minCoeff();
const double max = x.maxCoeff();
for (int k = 0; k < x.size(); k++) {
x_norm(k) = (x(k) - min)/(max - min);
}
return x_norm;
}
int main() {
typedef Spline<double, 1, 3> Spline1D;
typedef SplineFitting<Spline1D> Spline1DFitting;
const Vector4d x{0, 1, 2, 4};
const Vector4d y = (x.array().square()); // x^2
const auto knots = normalize(x); // Normalize x to be between 0 and 1
const double scale = 1 / (x.maxCoeff() - x.minCoeff());
const double scale_sq = scale * scale;
Spline1D spline = Spline1DFitting::Interpolate(y.transpose(), 3, knots);
cout << "1st deriv at x = 0: " << spline.derivatives(0.00, 1)(1) * scale << endl;
cout << "1st deriv at x = 1: " << spline.derivatives(0.25, 1)(1) * scale << endl;
cout << "1st deriv at x = 2: " << spline.derivatives(0.50, 1)(1) * scale << endl;
cout << "1st deriv at x = 3: " << spline.derivatives(0.75, 1)(1) * scale << endl;
cout << "1st deriv at x = 4: " << spline.derivatives(1.00, 1)(1) * scale << endl;
cout << endl;
/**
* IMPORTANT NOTE: Eigen's spline module is not documented well. Once you fit a spline
* to find the derivative of the fitted spline at any point u [0, 1] you call:
*
* spline.derivatives(u, 1)(1)
* ^ ^ ^
* | | |
* | | +------- Access the result
* | +---------- Derivative order
* +------------- Parameter u [0, 1]
*
* The last bit `(1)` is if the spline is 1D. And value of `1` for the first
* order. `2` for the second order. Do not forget to scale the result.
*
* For higher dimensions, treat the return as a matrix and grab the 1st or
* 2nd column for the first and second derivative.
*/
cout << "2nd deriv at x = 0: " << spline.derivatives(0.00, 2)(2) * scale_sq << endl;
cout << "2nd deriv at x = 1: " << spline.derivatives(0.25, 2)(2) * scale_sq << endl;
cout << "2nd deriv at x = 2: " << spline.derivatives(0.50, 2)(2) * scale_sq << endl;
cout << "2nd deriv at x = 3: " << spline.derivatives(0.75, 2)(2) * scale_sq << endl;
cout << "2nd deriv at x = 4: " << spline.derivatives(1.00, 2)(2) * scale_sq << endl;
return 0;
}
Example output:
1st deriv at x = 0: 4.52754e-16
1st deriv at x = 1: 2
1st deriv at x = 2: 4
1st deriv at x = 3: 6
1st deriv at x = 4: 8
2nd deriv at x = 0: 2
2nd deriv at x = 1: 2
2nd deriv at x = 2: 2
2nd deriv at x = 3: 2
2nd deriv at x = 4: 2