Topological complexity is a numerical homotopy-type invariant introduced by M. Farber about 15 years ago, motivated by the motion planning problem from robotics. For a given space, this invariant provides a measure of the complexity of navigation in the space. Computing this invariant is sometimes easy, sometimes hard. I'll attempt to illustrate this, with surfaces and their configuration spaces.

Einladung von Prof. Dr. Eva-Maria Feichtner