Motion of Curves in the Plane

Kinematics of moving curves in two dimensions is formulated in terms of intrinsic geometries. The velocity is assumed to be local in the sense that it is a functional of the curvature and its derivatives. The modified Korteweg-de Vries (mKdV) equation and its hierarchy are included in the theory when the normal velocity obeys a recursion relation. Curves corresponding to solutions of the mKdV equation are explicitly constructed.