Haptic perception remains a grand challenge for artificial hands. Dexterous manipulators could be enhanced by “haptic intelligence” that enables identification of objects and their features via touch alone. Haptic perception of local shape would be useful when vision is obstructed or when proprioceptive feedback is inadequate, as observed in this study. In this work, a robot hand outfitted with...

A generalized action for strings which is a sum of the Nambu-Goto and the extrinsic curvature (the energy integral of the surface) terms, is used to couple strings to gravity. It is shown that the conical singularity has deficit angle that has contributions from both the above terms. It is found that the effect of the extrinsic curvature is to oppose that of the N-G action for the temperature o...

We construct flat metrics in a given conformal class with prescribed singularities of real orders at marked points of a closed real surface. The singularities can be small conical, cylindrical, and large conical with possible translation component. Along these lines we give an elementary proof of the uniformization theorem for the sphere. 1. Uniformization in genus 0 and holomorphic structures ...

The local ζ−function approach is implemented to regularize the natural path integral definition of the geometric entropy in the large mass black hole Euclidean manifold. The case of a massless field coupled with the (off-shell) singular curvature is considered. It is proved that the geometric entropy is independent of the curvature coupling parameter ξ avoiding negative values obtained in other...

In this paper we solve the Plateau problem for spacelike surfaces with constant mean curvature in Lorentz-Minkowski three-space L and spanning two circular (axially symmetric) contours in parallel planes. We prove that rotational symmetric surfaces are the only compact spacelike surfaces in L of constant mean curvature bounded by two concentric circles in parallel planes. As conclusion, we char...

It is well known that the gravitational field modifies the electrostatic interaction of a charged particle in such a way that the particle experiences a finite self-force [1,2]. The origin of this force comes from the space-time curvature associated with the gravitational field. On the other hand, even in the absence of curvature, such as in the conical space-time of an infinite straight cosmic...

Discrete differential geometry aims to develop discrete equivalents of the geometric notions and methods of classical differential geometry. This survey contains a discussion of the following two fundamental discretization principles: the transformation group principle (smooth geometric objects and their discretizations are invariant with respect to the same transformation group) and the consis...