Minimal time splines on the sphere (Q723339)

In this paper, the authors continue their previous work [\textit{P. Balseiro} et al., J. Geom. Mech. 9, No. 3, 257--290 (2017; Zbl 1368.65092)] where they obtained a geometric formulation for some variational problems regarding the \(TQ\) space. The current paper contains 8 sections and continues the previous work of the authors, but this time, the authors are focused on time minimal splines on \(S^{2}(r)\). The first two sections of the paper are devoted to the presentation of the preliminary results. In Section 3, for the case \(n=2\), they obtain interesting results and also they derive the reduced Hamiltonian and find two families of special analytical solutions. In Section 7, a numerical simulation is presented using the free software BOCOP. Finally in Section 8, some research directions are presented. In conclusion, the paper is interesting and contains a link between geometry and some other important research fields, such as: robotics and spacetime.