We relate the sub-Riemannian geometry on the group of rigid motions of the plane to `bicycling mathematics. We show that this geometrys geodesics correspond to bike paths whose front tracks are either non-inflectional Euler elasticae or straight lines, and that its infinite minimizing geodesics (or `metric lines) correspond to bike paths whose front tracks are either straight lines or `Eulers solitons (also known as Syntractrix or Convicts curves).
{em Riemannian cubics} are curves in a manifold $M$ that satisfy a variational condition appropriate for interpolation problems. When $M$ is the rotation group SO(3), Riemannian cubics are track-summands of {em Riemannian cubic splines}, used for motion planning of rigid bodies. Partial integrability results are known for Riemannian cubics, and the asymptotics of Riemannian cubics in SO(3) are reasonably well understood. The mathematical properties and medium-term behaviour of Riemannian cubics in SO(3) are known to be be extremely rich, but there are numerical methods for calculating Riemannian cubic splines in practice. What is missing is an understanding of the short-term behaviour of Riemannian cubics, and it is this that is important for applications. The present paper fills this gap by deriving approximations to nearly geodesic Riemannian cubics in terms of elementary functions. The high quality of these approximations depends on mathematical results that are specific to Riemannian cubics.
We show that every paracomplex space form is locally isometric to a modified Riemannian extension and give necessary and sufficient conditions so that a modified Riemannian extension is Einstein. We exhibit Riemannian extension Osserman manifolds of signature (3,3) whose Jacobi operators have non-trivial Jordan normal form and which are not nilpotent. We present new four dimensional results in Osserman geometry.
This paper is a short summary of our recent work on the medians and means of probability measures in Riemannian manifolds. Firstly, the existence and uniqueness results of local medians are given. In order to compute medians in practical cases, we propose a subgradient algorithm and prove its convergence. After that, Frechet medians are considered. We prove their statistical consistency and give some quantitative estimations of their robustness with the aid of upper curvature bounds. We also show that, in compact Riemannian manifolds, the Frechet medians of generic data points are always unique. Stochastic and deterministic algorithms are proposed for computing Riemannian p-means. The rate of convergence and error estimates of these algorithms are also obtained. Finally, we apply the medians and the Riemannian geometry of Toeplitz covariance matrices to radar target detection.
A leafwise Hodge decomposition was proved by Sanguiao for Riemannian foliations of bounded geometry. Its proof is explained again in terms of our study of bounded geometry for Riemannian foliations. It is used to associate smoothing operators to foliated flows, and describe their Schwartz kernels. All of this is extended to a leafwise version of the Novikov differential complex.
Twenty five years ago U. Pinkall discovered that the Korteweg-de Vries equation can be realized as an evolution of curves in centoraffine geometry. Since then, a number of authors interpreted various properties of KdV and its generalizations in terms of centoraffine geometry. In particular, the Backlund transformation of the Korteweg-de Vries equation can be viewed as a relation between centroaffine curves. Our paper concerns self-Backlund centroaffine curves. We describe general properties of these curves and provide a detailed description of them in terms of elliptic functions. Our work is a centroaffine counterpart to the study done by F. Wegner of a similar problem in Euclidean geometry, related to Ulams problem of describing the (2-dimensional) bodies that float in equilibrium in all positions and to bicycle kinematics. We also consider a discretization of the problem where curves are replaced by polygons. This is related to discretization of KdV and the cross-ratio dynamics on ideal polygons.