Non-holonomic integrators

Abstract

Abstract. We introduce a discretization of the Lagrange-d’Alembert principle for Lagrangian systems with nonholonomic constraints, which allows us to construct numerical integrators that approximate the continuous flow. We study the geometric invariance properties of the discrete flow which provide an explanation for the good performance of the proposed method. This is tested on two examples: a nonholonomic particle with a quadratic potential and a mobile robot with fixed orientation.