PlanarLinkages swMATH ID: 17974 Software Authors: Christoph Koutschan Description: Mathematica package PlanarLinkages.m. Designing mechanical devices, called linkages, that draw a given plane curve has been a topic that interested engineers and mathematicians for hundreds of years, and recently also computer scientists. Already in 1876, Kempe proposed a procedure for solving the problem in full generality, but his constructions tend to be extremely complicated. We provide a novel algorithm that produces much simpler linkages, but works only for parametric curves. Our approach is to transform the problem into a factorization task over some noncommutative algebra. We show how to compute such a factorization, and how to use it to construct a linkage tracing a given curve. Homepage: http://www.koutschan.de/data/link/ Dependencies: Mathematica Related Software: Mathematica Cited in: 2 Publications Standard Articles 1 Publication describing the Software, including 1 Publication in zbMATH Year Motion polynomials and planar linkages. Zbl 1365.68496Koutschan, Christoph 2016 all top 5 Cited by 6 Authors 2 Koutschan, Christoph 1 Gallet, Matteo 1 Li, Zijia 1 Regensburger, Georg 1 Schicho, Josef 1 Villamizar, Nelly Cited in 2 Serials 1 Mathematics of Computation 1 ACM Communications in Computer Algebra Cited in 5 Fields 2 Algebraic geometry (14-XX) 2 Computer science (68-XX) 1 Field theory and polynomials (12-XX) 1 Associative rings and algebras (16-XX) 1 Mechanics of particles and systems (70-XX) Citations by Year