The rotating normal form of braids is regular
  Defined on Birman-Ko-Lee monoids, the rotating normal form has strong connections with the Dehornoy's braid ordering. It can be seen as a process for selecting between all the representative words of a Birman-Ko-Lee braid a particular one, called rotating word. In this paper we construct, for all n 2, a finite-state automaton which recognizes rotating words on n strands, proving that the rotating normal form is regular. As a consequence we obtain the regularity of a $\sigma$-definite normal form defined on the whole braid group. 
Jean Fromentin (LMPA)
math.GR cs.CL cs.FL