A homotopy bigroupoid of a topological space (Q5939002)

`Modern higher dimensional algebra has its roots in the dream of finding a natural and convenient completely algebraic description of the homotopy type of a topological space' [\textit{J. C. Baez} and \textit{J. Dolan}, J. Math. Phys. 36, No. 11, 6073-6105 (1995; Zbl 0863.18004)]. There are now several quite successful constructions of such models, more or less near the topological base. The majority do need quite a large and sophisticated knowledge of the tools of algebraic topology, category theory, etc. The model for 2-types studied in this paper is one of two related ones developed in recent work by the authors. Here they use bigroupoids, elsewhere 2-groupoids. Both use quite an elementary knowledge of category theory. The main difference is that in the bigroupoid version composition is only weakly associative, i.e., the two end products of a triple composition are explicitly linked by an invertible element from the next structural level of the bigroupoid, whilst it is strictly associative in the 2-groupoid version. The construction of the bigroupoid \(\Pi_2X\) associated to a space \(X\) is beautifully simple, generalising the usual construction of the fundamental groupoid. This paper is an excellent introduction to the area.