Santa Fe Institute

Seminar

July 26, 2012
12:15 PM
Collins Conference Room

Louis Theran (Freie Universität Berlin)

Abstract. Bar-joint frameworks are structures made out of fixed-length bars connected by joints with full rotational freedom.  Questions such as whether a framework can be moved in any way besides translating and rotating it as a single rigid object, and, if not, what the allowed motions are, arise in a wide variety of practical problems such as sensor network localization, protein analysis, robotics, crystallography, and analysis of network glasses.  Combinatorial rigidity is concerned with what properties of frameworks can be deduced by looking at only the graph made by the bars.  In dimension 2, this is well-understood, while in higher dimensions, the analogous questions are long-standing open problems.

I'll describe the basic ideas of the field and some recent advances.

Purpose: Resident Faculty

SFI Host: Cris Moore

More Info

• * SFI community lectures are free, open, & accessible to the public.
• * Seminars & colloquia are geared for scientists but free & open to the interested public.
• * All other SFI events are by invitation only.
• * Note: We are unable to accommodate members of the public for SFI's limited lunch service; you're welcome to bring your own.