Geodesics in the configuration spaces of two points in R^n

Abstract

We determine explicit formulas for geodesics (in the Euclidean metric) in the configuration space of ordered pairs (x,x') of points in R^n which satisfy d(x,x')>=epsilon. We interpret this as two or three (depending on the parity of n) geodesic motion-planning rules for this configuration space. In the associated unordered configuration space, we need not prescribe that the points stay apart by epsilon. For this space, with a Euclidean metric, we show that geodesic motion-planning rules correspond to ordinary motion-planning rules on RP^{n-1}.

Replacement of paper which just did the ordered case