This book explores connections between control theory and geometric mechanics. The author links control theory with a geometric view of classical mechanics in both its Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations, and in particular with the theory of mechanical systems subject to motion constraints. The synthesis is appropriate as there is a rich connection between mechanics and nonlinear control theory. The book provides a unified treatment of nonlinear control theory and constrained mechanical systems that incorporates material not available in other recent texts. The book benefits graduate students and researchers in the area who want to enhance their understanding and enhance their techniques.

This book explores some of the connections between control theory and geometric mechanics; that is, control theory is linked with a geometric view of classical mechanics in both its Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations and in particular with the theory of mechanical systems subject to motion constraints. The synthesis of the topic is appropriate as there is a particularly rich connection between mechanics and nonlinear control theory. The book provides a unified treatment of nonlinear control theory and constrained mechanical systems and illustrates the elegant mathematics behind many simple, interesting, and useful mechanical examples. It is intended for graduate students who wish to learn this subject and researchers in the area who want to enhance their techniques. The book contains sections focusing on physical examples and elementary terms, as well as theoretical sections that use sophisticated analysis and geometry. The first four chapters offer preliminaries and background information, while the remaining five are broken down into chapters on nonholonomic mechanics, control and stabilization, optimal control, energy-based, and recent energy-based techniques for mechanical and nonholonomic systems. The second edition of the book extends many of the topics discussed in the first edition to incorporate both new research and more historical background. The additional material includes work on the Hamel equations and quasivelocities, discrete dynamics, bo th holonomic and nonholonomic, Hamiltonization, and the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. In addition new examples and exercises have been added. Review of earlier Edition (A.J. van der Schaft, IEEE Control System Magazine, 2005 ) This book can be read on many different levels and has been described as a "delightful book that will be valuable for both the control community and researchers" .

The motions of various mechanical systems which we wish to synthesize and control often have to satisfy certain kinds of restrictions imposed by the natural environment or the structure of the systems themselves. In mechanics, such restrictions are called constraints. Although the fundamental theory of mechanical systems with constraints was established and developed in the last century, recent research and developments in analytical mechanics and control theory from a geometric viewpoint have inspired a strong desire to reinterpret and reformulate the theory of constrained dynamics in an intrinsic geometric way. In addition, many practical problems in recent investigations in mechanical and electrical engineering, such as modeling and control of mobile robots and dextrons robotic hands, and the design and control of spacecraft, also show the need for a deeper understanding of the role that constraints play in mechanical systems.

Nonholonomic systems are a widespread topic in several scientific and commercial domains, including robotics, locomotion and space exploration. This work sheds new light on this interdisciplinary character through the investigation of a variety of aspects coming from several disciplines. The main aim is to illustrate the idea that a better understanding of the geometric structures of mechanical systems unveils new and unknown aspects to them, and helps both analysis and design to solve standing problems and identify new challenges. In this way, separate areas of research such as Classical Mechanics, Differential Geometry, Numerical Analysis or Control Theory are brought together in this study of nonholonomic systems.

This book explores connections between control theory and geometric mechanics. The author links control theory with a geometric view of classical mechanics in both its Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations, and in particular with the theory of mechanical systems subject to motion constraints. The synthesis is appropriate as there is a rich connection between mechanics and nonlinear control theory. The book provides a unified treatment of nonlinear control theory and constrained mechanical systems that incorporates material not available in other recent texts. The book benefits graduate students and researchers in the area who want to enhance their understanding and enhance their techniques.

Nonholonomic Motion Planning grew out of the workshop that took place at the 1991 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. It consists of contributed chapters representing new developments in this area. Contributors to the book include robotics engineers, nonlinear control experts, differential geometers and applied mathematicians. Nonholonomic Motion Planning is arranged into three chapter groups: Controllability: one of the key mathematical tools needed to study nonholonomic motion. Motion Planning for Mobile Robots: in this section the papers are focused on problems with nonholonomic velocity constraints as well as constraints on the generalized coordinates. Falling Cats, Space Robots and Gauge Theory: there are numerous connections to be made between symplectic geometry techniques for the study of holonomies in mechanics, gauge theory and control. In this section these connections are discussed using the backdrop of examples drawn from space robots and falling cats reorienting themselves. Nonholonomic Motion Planning can be used either as a reference for researchers working in the areas of robotics, nonlinear control and differential geometry, or as a textbook for a graduate level robotics or nonlinear control course.

Control theory, a synthesis of geometric theory of differential equations enriched with variational principles and the associated symplectic geometry, emerges as a new mathematical subject of interest to engineers, mathematicians, and physicists. This collection of articles focuses on several distinctive research directions having origins in mechanics and differential geometry, but driven by modern control theory. The first of these directions deals with the singularities of small balls for problems of sub-Riemannian geomtery and provides a generic classification of singularities for two-dimensional distributions of contact type in a three-dimensional ambient space. The second direction deals with invariant optimal problems on Lie groups exemplified through the problem of Dublins extended to symmetric spaces, the elastic problem of Kirchhoff and its relation to the heavy top. The results described in the book are explicit and demonstrate convincingly the power of geometric formalism. The remaining directions deal with the geometric nature of feedback analysed through the language of fiber bundles, and the connections of geometric control to non-holonomic problems in mechanics, as exemplified through the motions of a sphere on surfaces of revolution. This book provides quick access to new research directions in geometric control theory. It also demonstrates the effectiveness of new insights and methods that control theory brings to mechanics and geometry.

Three main disciplines in the area of multibody systems are covered: kinematics, dynamics, and control, as pertaining to systems that can be modelled as coupling or rigid bodies. The treatment is intended to give a state of the art of the topics discussed.

Nonholonomic systems are control systems which depend linearly on the control. Their underlying geometry is the sub-Riemannian geometry, which plays for these systems the same role as Euclidean geometry does for linear systems. In particular the usual notions of approximations at the first order, that are essential for control purposes, have to be defined in terms of this geometry. The aim of these notes is to present these notions of approximation and their application to the motion planning problem for nonholonomic systems.

Introduction to Dynamical Systems and Geometric Mechanics provides a comprehensive tour of two fields that are intimately entwined: dynamical systems is the study of the behavior of physical systems that may be described by a set of nonlinear first-order ordinary differential equations in Euclidean space, whereas geometric mechanics explore similar systems that instead evolve on differentiable manifolds. The first part discusses the linearization and stability of trajectories and fixed points, invariant manifold theory, periodic orbits, Poincaré maps, Floquet theory, the Poincaré-Bendixson theorem, bifurcations, and chaos. The second part of the book begins with a self-contained chapter on differential geometry that introduces notions of manifolds, mappings, vector fields, the Jacobi-Lie bracket, and differential forms.