Related papers: Configuration Spaces for the Working Undergraduate
This paper aims to provide a careful and self-contained introduction to the theory of topological degree in Euclidean spaces. It is intended for people mostly interested in analysis and, in general, a heavy background in algebraic or…
These expository notes are dedicated to the study of the topology of configuration spaces of manifolds. We give detailed computations of many invariants, including the fundamental group of the configuration spaces of $\mathbb{R}^2$, the…
Configuration spaces of distinct labeled points on the plane are of practical relevance in designing safe control schemes for Automated Guided Vehicles (robots) in industrial settings. In this announcement, we consider the problem of the…
The paper surveys topological problems relevant to the motion planning problem of robotics and includes some new results and constructions. First we analyse the notion of topological complexity of configuration spaces which is responsible…
Various non-trivial spaces are becoming popular for embedding structured data such as graphs, texts, or images. Following spherical and hyperbolic spaces, more general product spaces have been proposed. However, searching for the best…
This expository article describes applications of topological configuration spaces to the control of robotic systems. In particular, we review recent work by the authors on configuration spaces of graphs. These are lovely spaces: we show…
We consider the space of all configurations of finitely many (potentially nested) circles in the plane. We prove that this space is aspherical, and compute the fundamental group of each of its connected components. It turns out these…
This paper studies the configuration space of all possible positions of a linkage in R^n. For example, it shows that for every compact algebraic set, there is a linkage whose configuration space is analytically isomorphic to a finite number…
We survey results on the topological complexity of classical configuration spaces of distinct ordered points in orientable surfaces and related spaces, including certain orbit configuration spaces and Eilenberg-Mac Lane spaces associated to…
This paper characterizes which subsets of C^n can be the set of positions of n points on a linkage in the complex plane C. For example, assuming compactness they are just compact semialgebraic sets. Noncompact configuration spaces are…
This paper studies the configuration spaces of linkages whose underlying graph is a single cycle. Assume that the edge lengths are such that there are no configurations in which all the edges lie along a line. The main results are that,…
Understanding degrees of freedom in classical mechanics is fundamental to characterizing physical systems. Counting them is usually easy, especially if we can assign them a clear meaning. However, the precise definition of a degree of…
We survey and expand on the work of Segal, Milgram and the author on the topology of spaces of maps of positive genus curves into $n$-th complex projective space, $n\geq 1$ (in both the holomorphic and continuous categories). Both based and…
In [1] we introduced the concept of structured space, which is a topological space that locally resembles some algebraic structures. In [2] we proceeded the study of these spaces, developing two cohomology theories. The aim of this paper is…
Wheeler emphasized the study of Superspace - the space of 3-geometries on a spatial manifold of fixed topology. This is a configuration space for GR; knowledge of configuration spaces is useful as regards dynamics and QM.In this Article I…
We provide explicit motion planners for Euiclidean configuration spaces. This allows us to recover some known values of the topological complexity and the Lusternik-Schinirelman category of these spaces.
From a group action on a space, define a variant of the configuration space by insisting that no two points inhabit the same orbit. When the action is almost free, this "orbit configuration space" is the complement of an arrangement of…
Ordered locally convex spaces is an important classes of spaces in the theory of ordered topological vector spaces just as locally convex spaces in the theory of topological vector spaces. Some special classes of ordered locally convex…
In this paper we study the homology and cohomology of confguration spaces of two distinct particles on a graph. Our main tool is intersection theory for cycles in graphs. We obtain an explicit description of the cohomology algebra of the…
In this paper we introduce a new kind of topological space, called 'structured space', which locally resembles various kinds of algebraic structures. This can be useful, for instance, to locally study a space that cannot be globally endowed…