Basic Notions Seminar talk on November 8, 2002

Speaker:   Sergey Yuzvinsky (University of Oregon)

Title:   Topological Robotics

Abstract: 
    The main character of the talk will be the new homotopy invariant of a topological space. I will define it, discuss its properties, and give examples of its computation. If the space is the configuration space of a robot then this invariant shows how many continuous formulas are needed to plan the motions of the robot. About 75% of the talk will use only the first term of 600 topology course.