Geometry and dynamics of planar linkages (Q1936420)

The authors analyse the curvature of the configuration space of a planar linkage with respect to the Riemannian metric induced by the natural embedding of the configuration space into the Euclidean space. They apply powerful methods of ergodic theory to describe the behaviour of the dynamics of the geodesic flow associated to such a linkage. The results of the paper apply to a more general class of linkages compared to the influential paper of \textit{T. J. Hunt} and \textit{R. S. MacKay} [Nonlinearity 16, No. 4, 1499--1510 (2003; Zbl 1040.37072)].