Nonholonomic mechanics

Abstract

Nonholonomic systems provide an important class of mechanical control systems. One reason for this importance is that nonintegrability is essential to both the mechanics and the control: Nonintegrable constraint distributions are the essence of nonholonomic systems, while a nonintegrable distribution of control vector fields is the key to controllability of nonlinear systems. We will learn how these two different types of nonintegrability work together when we study control of nonholonomic mechanical systems.