I am reading a book on motion planning for mobile robots, I have a really hard time with the mathematics. Some parts it is talking about the topology of the space and manifolds and compactness of the space.... I am too lost. I also have some problems with the math notations used in this book. There is an appendix which goes through topology and manifolds but it's only 3 pages and it really fast.
I need a very basic book or paper about topology, which I can read in about a month. Something very basic and with some real applications.
Any other comments are highly appreciated.
Edit:
I think I will need to have a basic idea about:
- Topology
- Manifolds
- Group theory
- Homology
I have found some basic books on topology. Would you take a look at them and let me know which one would be more appropriate for me?
1- Topology for Computing
2- Computational Topology
3- Elementary Applied Topology
4- Topology and Robotics (Contemporary Mathematics), I think this one would be great if I have some basic idea about topology
I have not read this: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Topology-Applied-Colin-Adams/dp/0131848690/ but I heard good things about it!