The unit normal vector points "in the direction of curvature". This means that at a point along an image curve if you were to build a circle whose curvature is equal to the unit normal would point towards the center of the circle. This circle is called the osculating circle. If a tangent line is a line of best fit, you can think of the osculating circle as the circle of best fit.
The GeoGebra applet below allows you to type in different paths and view the osculating circle attached to a point as it moves around the path.
You have all the tools necessary to write a parameterization of the osculating circle. Do so.
Let be a twice differentiable regular curve with unit normal and curvature and let be in the domain of .
The osculating circle should contain the point and have curvature . Since the curvature of a circle is constant and is the reciprocal of the radius, we know the radius of the osculating circle should be .
We also know that the unit normal is parallel to the radius of the osculating circle and pointing towards the center. Thus we can find the center of the osculating circle via:
Now we can parameterize the osculating circle by scaling a unit circle and then translating the center to :
Osculating Circle =