In this article we explore the rigidity of realizations of incidence geometries consisting of points and rigid rods: rod configurations. We survey previous results on the rigidity of structures that are related to rod configurations, discuss how to find realizations of incidence geometries as rod configurations, and how this relates to the 2-plane matroid. We also derive further sufficient conditions for the minimal rigidity of k-uniform rod configurations and give an example of an infinite family of minimally rigid 3-uniform rod configurations failing the same conditions. Finally, we construct v3-configurations that are flexible in the plane, and show that there are flexible v3-configurations for all sufficiently large values of v.

We investigate the rigidity properties of rod configurations. Rod configurations are realizations of rank two incidence geometries as points (joints) and straight lines (rods) in the Euclidean plane, such that the lines move as rigid bodies, connected at the points. Note that not all incidence geometries have such realizations. We show that under the assumptions that the rod configuration exists and is sufficiently generic, its infinitesimal rigidity is equivalent to the infinitesimal rigidity of generic frameworks of the graph defined by replacing each rod by a cone over its point set. To put this into context, the molecular conjecture states that the infinitesimal rigidity of rod configurations realizing 2-regular hypergraphs is determined by the rigidity of generic body and hinge frameworks realizing the same hypergraph. This conjecture was proven by Jackson and Jordán in the plane, and by Katoh and Tanigawa in arbitrary dimension. Whiteley proved a version of the molecular conjecture for hypergraphs of arbitrary degree that have realizations as independent body and joint frameworks. Our result extends his result to hypergraphs that do not necessarily have realizations as independent body and joint frameworks, under the assumptions listed above.

In this paper, we establish a general setup for studying incidence-preserving motions of projective geometric configurations of points and lines via a "projective rigidity matrix". The spaces of infinitesimal motions of a point-line configuration and dependencies amongst the point-line incidences can be interpreted as the kernel and co-kernel of this projective rigidity matrix, respectively. We also introduce a symmetry-adapted projective rigidity matrix for analysing symmetric configurations and their symmetry-preserving motions. The symmetry may be a point group or a more general symmetry, such as an autopolarity. 

Let P be a set of points and L a set of lines in the (extended) Euclidean plane, and I⊆P×L, where i=(p,l)∈I means that point p and line l are incident. The incidences can be interpreted as quadratic constraints on the homogeneous coordinates of the points and lines. We study the space of incidence preserving motions of the given incidence structure by linearizing the system of quadratic equations. The Jacobian of the quadratic system, our projective rigidity matrix, leads to the notion of independence/dependence of incidences. Column dependencies correspond to infinitesimal motions. Row dependencies or self-stresses allow for new interpretations of classical geometric incidence theorems. We show that self-stresses are characterized by a 3-fold balance. As expected, infinitesimal (first order) projective rigidity as well as second order projective rigidity imply projective rigidity but not conversely. Several open problems and possible generalizations are indicated. 

We generalize a sparsity condition for hypergraphs and show a result5relating sparseness of hypergraphs to the decomposition of a modified6incidence graph into edge-disjoint forests. We also give new sparsity con-7ditions for posets and define an algorithm of pebble game type for posets8to test when these sparsity conditions hold. Furthermore, we prove that9in certain cases, the sparsity conditions define a greedoid.

We present results on rigidity of structures of rigid rods connected in joints: rod configurations. The underlying combinatorial structure of a rod configuration is an incidence structure. Our aim is to find simple ways of determining which rod configurations admit non-trivial motions, using the underlying incidence structure.

Rigidity of graphs in the plane is well understood. Indeed, there is a polynomial time algorithm for deciding whether most realisations of a graph are rigid. One of the results presented here equates rigidity of sufficiently generic rod configurations to rigidity of a related graph. As a consequence, itis possible to determine the rigidity of rod configurations using the previously mentioned polynomial time algorithm. We use this to show that all v3-configurations on up to 15 points and all triangle-free v3-configurations on up to 20 points are rigid in regular position, if such a realisation exists. We also conjecture that the smallest v3-configuration that is flexible in regular position is a previously known 28₃-configuration.