Title:  Nonholonomic Mechanics and Locomotion: The Snakeboard Example

 Authors:  Jim Ostrowski, Andrew Lewis, Richard Murray, Joel Burdick

 In :  Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, 1994.
	 

ABSTRACT:

Analysis and simulations are performed for a simplified model of a commercially available variant of the skateboard, known as the Snakeboard. Although the model exhibits basic gait patterns seen in a large number of locomotion problems, the analysis tools currently available do not apply to this problem. The difficulty lies primarily in the way in which the nonholonomic constraints enter into the system. As a first step towards understanding systems represented by our model we present the equations of motion and perform some controllability analysis for the snakeboard. We also perform numerical simulations of possible gait patterns which are characteristic of snakeboard locomotion.

KEYWORDS: Nonholonomic Mechanics, Locomotion, Snakeboard