Stress matrices and global rigidity of frameworks on surfaces

Abstract

In 2005, Bob Connelly showed that a generic framework in $\bR^d$ is globally rigid if it has a stress matrix of maximum possible rank, and that this sufficient condition for generic global rigidity is preserved by the 1-extension operation. His results gave a key step in the characterisation of generic global rigidity in the plane. We extend these results to frameworks on surfaces in $\bR^3$. For a framework on a family of concentric cylinders, cones or ellipsoids, we show that there is a natural surface stress matrix arising from assigning edge and vertex weights to the framework, in equilibrium at each vertex. In the case of cylinders and ellipsoids, we show that having a maximum rank stress matrix is sufficient to guarantee generic global rigidity on the surface. We then show that this sufficient condition for generic global rigidity is preserved under 1-extension and use this to make progress on the problem of characterising generic global rigidity on the cylinder.