A construction of almost automorphic minimal sets

Abstract: We describe a general procedure to construct topological extensions of given skew product maps with one-dimensional fibres, by blowing up a countable number of single points to vertical segments. This allows to produce various examples of unusual dynamics, including almost automorphic minimal sets of almost periodically forced systems, point-distal but non-distal homeomorpisms of the torus (as first constructed by Rees) or minimal sets of quasiperiodically forced interval maps which are not filled-in.