Abstract
It has been observed that the motion planning problem of robotics reduces mathematically to the problem of finding a section of the path-space fibration, leading to the notion of topological complexity, as introduced by M. Farber. In this approach one imposes no limitations on motion of the system assuming that any continuous motion is admissible. In many applications, however, a physical apparatus may have constrained controls, leading to constraints on its potential dynamics. In the present paper we adapt the notion of topological complexity to the case of directed topological spaces, which encompass such controlled systems, and also systems which appear in concurrency theory. We study properties of this new notion and make calculations for some interesting classes of examples.
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Notes
Note that we do not need to ask for s(b, b) to be the constant path on b. The section on the diagonal of \(\varGamma _X\) is in fact necessarily made of paths homotopic to b. We thank an anonymous referee and Jeremy Dubut for pointing out this fact to us.
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Funding
The study was funded by DGA-MRIS (Grant No. Safety of Complex Robotic Systems).
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Goubault, E., Farber, M. & Sagnier, A. Directed topological complexity. J Appl. and Comput. Topology 4, 11–27 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41468-019-00034-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41468-019-00034-x
Keywords
- Directed topology
- Robot motion planning
- Topological complexity
- Controlled systems
- Concurrent systems
- Homotopy theory