ABSTRACT
Tensegrities were invented and implemented by Kenneth Snelson in 1947 and other artists who were intrigued by the almost magical way the sticks could be suspended in midair. In engineering, tensegrity structures provide efficient solutions for applications in deployable structures, mechanisms, multi agent systems, interesting examples of form finding, algorithms for synthesis and analysis and smart sensors as well as being intriguingly light relative to their stability. Tensegrity frameworks arise from bar-joint frameworks by replacing some of the fixed distance constraints by inequalities. Equilibrium stresses, with their physical interpretation as forces on the edges, can easily be extended to tensegrities, in fact they were originially introduced to the rigidity literature in the context of tensegrities. Computationally, as with bar-joint frameworks, testing global rigidity for tensegrities is NP-hard, essentially equivalent to the subset-sum problem. A jammed packing thought of as a tensegrity can be detected, even for large sizes, using linear programming to verify rigidity.
