Non-abelian almost totally branched coverings over the platonic maps

A map is a 2-cell embedding of a connected graph into a closed surface. A map is orientable if the supporting surface is orientable. An orientable map is regular if its group of orientation-preserving automorphisms acts transitively on the darts. Using an equivalent algebraic description of regular maps and their coverings, we employ the theory of group extensions to classify the almost totally branched coverings of the platonic maps with non-abelian covering transformation groups, generalising the results of Hu, Nedela and Wang.