Motion planning in connected sums of real projective spaces

Abstract

The topological complexity ${\sf TC}(X)$ is a homotopy invariant of a topological space $X$, motivated by robotics, and providing a measure of the navigational complexity of $X$. The topological complexity of a connected sum of real projective planes, that is, a high genus nonorientable surface, is known to be maximal. We use algebraic tools to show that the analogous result holds for connected sums of higher dimensional real projective spaces.