The dynamics of an articulated $n$-trailer vehicle

Abstract

We derive the reduced equations of motion for an articulated $n$-trailer vehicle that moves under its own inertia on the plane. We show that the energy level surfaces in the reduced space are $(n+1)$-tori and we classify the equilibria within them, determining their stability. A thorough description of the dynamics is given in the case $n=1$.

23 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (2)

• The motion of the 2D hydrodynamic Chaplygin sleigh in the presence of circulation
• Configurations of an Articulated Arm and Singularities of Special Multi-Flags

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Dynamics of a multilink wheeled vehicle: partial solutions and unbounded speedup
• A variational-geometric approach for the optimal control of nonholonomic systems
• New Lie systems from Goursat distributions: reductions and reconstructions