Study totally umbilic submanifolds using planar pseudo-geodesics.
problem Characterize totally umbilic isometric immersions with parallel normalized mean curvature vector.
method Introduce planar pseudo-geodesics and analyze their properties; prove the equivalence of totally umbilic immersions and planar geodesic extrinsic shapes.
result An isometric immersion is totally umbilic if and only if every geodesic of the manifold has planar extrinsic shape.