We showed in the first paper of this series that the generic $C_2^1$-cofactor matroid is the unique maximal abstract $3$-rigidity matroid. In this paper we obtain a combinatorial characterization of independence in this matroid. This solves the cofactor counterpart of the combinatorial characterization problem for the rigidity of generic 3-dimensional bar-joint frameworks. We use our characterization to verify that the counterparts of conjectures of Dress (on the rank function) and Lov{a}sz and Yemini (which suggested a sufficient connectivity condition for rigidity) hold for this matroid.
A conjecture of Graver from 1991 states that the generic $3$-dimensional rigidity matroid is the unique maximal abstract $3$-rigidity matroid with respect to the weak order on matroids. Based on a close similarity between the generic $d$-dimensional rigidity matroid and the generic $C_{d-2}^{d-1}$-cofactor matroid from approximation theory, Whiteley made an analogous conjecture in 1996 that the generic $C_{d-2}^{d-1}$-cofactor matroid is the unique maximal abstract $d$-rigidity matroid for all $dgeq 2$. We verify the case $d=3$ of Whiteleys conjecture in this paper. A key step in our proof is to verify a second conjecture of Whiteley that the `double V-replacement operation preserves independence in the generic $C_2^1$-cofactor matroid.
We consider the problem of characterising the generic rigidity of bar-joint frameworks in $mathbb{R}^d$ in which each vertex is constrained to lie in a given affine subspace. The special case when $d=2$ was previously solved by I. Streinu and L. Theran in 2010. We will extend their characterisation to the case when $dgeq 3$ and each vertex is constrained to lie in an affine subspace of dimension $t$, when $t=1,2$ and also when $tgeq 3$ and $dgeq t(t-1)$. We then point out that results on body-bar frameworks obtained by N. Katoh and S. Tanigawa in 2013 can be used to characterise when a graph has a rigid realisation as a $d$-dimensional body-bar framework with a given set of linear constraints.
A one-to-one correspondence between the infinitesimal motions of bar-joint frameworks in $mathbb{R}^d$ and those in $mathbb{S}^d$ is a classical observation by Pogorelov, and further connections among different rigidity models in various different spaces have been extensively studied. In this paper, we shall extend this line of research to include the infinitesimal rigidity of frameworks consisting of points and hyperplanes. This enables us to understand correspondences between point-hyperplane rigidity, classical bar-joint rigidity, and scene analysis. Among other results, we derive a combinatorial characterization of graphs that can be realized as infinitesimally rigid frameworks in the plane with a given set of points collinear. This extends a result by Jackson and Jord{a}n, which deals with the case when three points are collinear.
A simple graph G=(V,E) is 3-rigid if its generic bar-joint frameworks in R3 are infinitesimally rigid. Block and hole graphs are derived from triangulated spheres by the removal of edges and the addition of minimally rigid subgraphs, known as blocks, in some of the resulting holes. Combinatorial characterisations of minimal $3$-rigidity are obtained for these graphs in the case of a single block and finitely many holes or a single hole and finitely many blocks. These results confirm a conjecture of Whiteley from 1988 and special cases of a stronger conjecture of Finbow-Singh and Whiteley from 2013.
Motivated by a rigidity-theoretic perspective on the Localization Problem in 2D, we develop an algorithm for computing circuit polynomials in the algebraic rigidity matroid associated to the Cayley-Menger ideal for $n$ points in 2D. We introduce combinatorial resultants, a new operation on graphs that captures properties of the Sylvester resultant of two polynomials in the algebraic rigidity matroid. We show that every rigidity circuit has a construction tree from $K_4$ graphs based on this operation. Our algorithm performs an algebraic elimination guided by the construction tree, and uses classical resultants, factorization and ideal membership. To demonstrate its effectiveness, we implemented our algorithm in Mathematica: it took less than 15 seconds on an example where a Groebner Basis calculation took 5 days and 6 hrs.