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Bicycle paths, elasticae and sub-Riemannian geometry
Abstract
We relate the sub-Riemannian geometry on the group of rigid motions of the plane to `bicycling mathematics'. We show that this geometry's geodesics correspond to bike paths whose front tracks are either non-inflectional Euler elasticae or straight lines, and that its infinite minimizing geodesics (or `metric lines') correspond to bike paths whose front tracks are either straight lines or `Euler's solitons' (also known as Syntractrix or Convicts' curves).
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