In motion planning, Moll and Kavraki [12] consider moving elastic objects through confined spaces. Roughly speaking, a flexible rectangular object is moved past a set of obstacles and is flexing along the path as required for the passage. Such motion problems arise in assembly design and analysis as
well. The required flexing is determined numerically using a bending energy functional, a precise but expensive approach. In the first approximation one can consider how the cross-section must bend using our analysis of bending energy curves.