In reading the author's other article, "Cross Product Considered Harmful", and I bet he would be interested in section 1.3 (starting on page 13) of the book "An Introduction to Complex Analysis for Engineers"
by Michael Alder. That book introduces complex analysis using the matrix form of sqrt(-1).<p><a href="http://elibrary.bsu.az/azad/new/2554.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://elibrary.bsu.az/azad/new/2554.pdf</a>
Anyone have recommendations for learning about mechanical linkages (books/MOOC/other)? Recently I've been intrigued by things like straight line linkages:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaucellier%E2%80%93Lipkin_linkage" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaucellier%E2%80%93Lipkin_lin...</a><p>...and the Chebyshev "paradoxical" linkage:<p><a href="https://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/01/03/chebyshevs-paradoxical-mechanism/" rel="nofollow">https://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/01/03/chebyshevs-paradox...</a><p>...and of course Kempe's "universality theorem", that there is a linkage that traces any polynomial curve.<p><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.09002" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.09002</a><p>I recently came across "Planar Linkages Following a Prescribed Motion":<p><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.05623" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.05623</a><p>...which looks awesome. Especially intriguing are sentences like:<p>"In modern terms, the procedure proposed by Kempe is a parsing algorithm. It takes the defining polynomial of a plane curve as input and realizes arithmetic operations via certain elementary linkages. In this work, we approach the question from a different perspective... ...By encoding motions via polynomials over a noncommutative algebra, we reduce this task to a factorization problem."<p>But currently the terminology used is considerably over my head. Anyone know what branches of math you should study to be able to understand things like:<p>"...we recall that one can embed SE2 as an open subset of a real projective space. This allows us to introduce a noncommutative algebra K whose multiplication corresponds to the group operation in SE2, hence mimicking the role played by dual quaternions with respect to SE3. A polynomial with coefficients in K therefore describes a family of direct isometries, which we call a rational motion."<p>...other suggestions for what to study to be able to synthesize new linkages? Places or forums for a beginner to ask questions about linkages?