The Hydrodynamic Chaplygin Sleigh

We consider the motion of rigid bodies in a potential fluid subject to certain nonholonomic constraints and show that it is described by Euler--Poincar\'e--Suslov equations. In the 2-dimensional case, when the constraint is realized by a blade attached to the body, the system provides a hydrodynamic generalization of the Chaplygin sleigh, whose dynamics are studied in detail. Namely, the equations of motion are integrated explicitly and the asymptotic behavior of the system is determined. It is shown how the presence of the fluid brings new features to such a behavior.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

The motion of the 2D hydrodynamic Chaplygin sleigh in the presence of circulation

We consider the motion of a planar rigid body in a potential flow with circulation and subject to a certain nonholonomic constraint. This model is related to the design of underwater vehicles. The equations of motion admit a reduction to a 2-dimensional nonlinear system, which is integrated explicitly. We show that the reduced system comprises both asymptotic and periodic dynamics separated by a critical value of the energy, and give a complete classification of types of the motion. Then we describe the whole variety of the trajectories of the body on the plane.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figures. This article uses some introductory material from arXiv:1109.321

Nonholonomic Dynamics

Nonholonomic systems are, roughly speaking, mechanical systems with constraints on their velocity that are not derivable from position constraints. They arise, for instance, in mechanical systems that have rolling contact (for example, the rolling of wheels without slipping) or certain kinds of sliding contact (such as the sliding of skates). They are a remarkable generalization of classical Lagrangian and Hamiltonian systems in which one allows position constraints only. There are some fascinating differences between nonholonomic systems and classical Hamiltonian or Lagrangian systems. Among other things: nonholonomic systems are nonvariational—they arise from the Lagrange-d’Alembert principle and not from Hamilton’s principle; while energy is preserved for nonholonomic systems, momentum is not always preserved for systems with symmetry (i.e., there is nontrivial dynamics associated with the nonholonomic generalization of Noether’s theorem); nonholonomic systems are almost Poisson but not Poisson (i.e., there is a bracket that together with the energy on the phase space defines the motion, but the bracket generally does not satisfy the Jacobi identity); and finally, unlike the Hamiltonian setting, volume may not be preserved in the phase space, leading to interesting asymptotic stability in some cases, despite energy conservation. The purpose of this article is to engage the reader’s interest by highlighting some of these differences along with some current research in the area. There has been some confusion in the literature for quite some time over issues such as the variational character of nonholonomic systems, so it is appropriate that we begin with a brief review of the history of the subject

Moving energies as first integrals of nonholonomic systems with affine constraints

In nonholonomic mechanical systems with constraints that are affine (linear nonhomogeneous) functions of the velocities, the energy is typically not a first integral. It was shown in [Fass\`o and Sansonetto, JNLS, 26, (2016)] that, nevertheless, there exist modifications of the energy, called there moving energies, which under suitable conditions are first integrals. The first goal of this paper is to study the properties of these functions and the conditions that lead to their conservation. In particular, we enlarge the class of moving energies considered in [Fass\`o and Sansonetto, JNLS, 26, (2016)]. The second goal of the paper is to demonstrate the relevance of moving energies in nonholonomic mechanics. We show that certain first integrals of some well known systems (the affine Veselova and LR systems), which had been detected on a case-by-case way, are instances of moving energies. Moreover, we determine conserved moving energies for a class of affine systems on Lie groups that include the LR systems, for a heavy convex rigid body that rolls without slipping on a uniformly rotating plane, and for an $n$-dimensional generalization of the Chaplygin sphere problem to a uniformly rotating hyperplane.Comment: 25 pages, 1 figure. Final version prepared according to the modifications suggested by the referees of Nonlinearit

Physics-based Machine Learning Methods for Control and Sensing in Fish-like Robots

Underwater robots are important for the construction and maintenance of underwater infrastructure, underwater resource extraction, and defense. However, they currently fall far behind biological swimmers such as fish in agility, efficiency, and sensing capabilities. As a result, mimicking the capabilities of biological swimmers has become an area of significant research interest. In this work, we focus specifically on improving the control and sensing capabilities of fish-like robots. Our control work focuses on using the Chaplygin sleigh, a two-dimensional nonholonomic system which has been used to model fish-like swimming, as part of a curriculum to train a reinforcement learning agent to control a fish-like robot to track a prescribed path. The agent is first trained on the Chaplygin sleigh model, which is not an accurate model of the swimming robot but crucially has similar physics; having learned these physics, the agent is then trained on a simulated swimming robot, resulting in faster convergence compared to only training on the simulated swimming robot. Our sensing work separately considers using kinematic data (proprioceptive sensing) and using surface pressure sensors. The effect of a swimming body\u27s internal dynamics on proprioceptive sensing is investigated by collecting time series of kinematic data of both a flexible and rigid body in a water tunnel behind a moving obstacle performing different motions, and using machine learning to classify the motion of the upstream obstacle. This revealed that the flexible body could more effectively classify the motion of the obstacle, even if only one if its internal states is used. We also consider the problem of using time series data from a `lateral line\u27 of pressure sensors on a fish-like body to estimate the position of an upstream obstacle. Feature extraction from the pressure data is attempted with a state-of-the-art convolutional neural network (CNN), and this is compared with using the dominant modes of a Koopman operator constructed on the data as features. It is found that both sets of features achieve similar estimation performance using a dense neural network to perform the estimation. This highlights the potential of the Koopman modes as an interpretable alternative to CNNs for high-dimensional time series. This problem is also extended to inferring the time evolution of the flow field surrounding the body using the same surface measurements, which is performed by first estimating the dominant Koopman modes of the surrounding flow, and using those modes to perform a flow reconstruction. This strategy of mapping from surface to field modes is more interpretable than directly constructing a mapping of unsteady fluid states, and is found to be effective at reconstructing the flow. The sensing frameworks developed as a result of this work allow better awareness of obstacles and flow patterns, knowledge which can inform the generation of paths through the fluid that the developed controller can track, contributing to the autonomy of swimming robots in challenging environments

Invariant Measures, Geometry, and Control of Hybrid and Nonholonomic Dynamical Systems

Constraints are ubiquitous when studying mechanical systems and fall into two main categories: hybrid (1-sided, unilateral) and nonholonomic/holonomic (2-sided, bilateral) constraints. A hybrid constraint takes the form h(x)≥0. An example of a constraint of this nature is requiring a billiard ball to remain within the confines of a table-top. The notable feature of these constraints is that when the ball reaches the boundary of the table-top (i.e. when h(x)=0), an impact occurs; this is a discontinuous jump in the dynamics. Dynamical systems that have this phenomenon generally fall under the domain of hybrid dynamical systems. On the other hand, nonholonomic constraints take the form h(x)=0. Generally, h will depend on both the positions and velocities and cannot be integrated to only depend on the positions (when it can be integrated, the constraint is called holonomic). An example of a nonholonomic constraint is an ice skate: motion is not allowed perpendicular to the direction of the skate. It is common that these systems are studied using tools from differential geometry. This thesis studies both hybrid and nonholonomic constraints together using the language of differential (specifically symplectic) geometry. However, due to the exotic nature of hybrid dynamics, some auxiliary results are found that pertain to the asymptotic nature of these systems. These include the idea of a hybrid limit-set, Floquet theory, and a Poincaré-Bendixson theorem for planar systems. The bulk of this work focuses on finding (smooth) invariant measures for both nonholonomic and hybrid systems (as well as systems involving both types of constraints). Necessary and sufficient conditions are found which guarantee the existence of an invariant measure for nonholonomic systems in which the density depends only on the configuration variables. Extending this idea to hybrid nonholonomic systems requires that the impact preserves the measure as well. To build towards this, relatively simple conditions to test whether or not a differential form is hybrid-invariant are derived. In the cases where the density depends on only the configuration variables, the measure is still invariant under the hybrid dynamics independent of the choice of impacts. The billiard problem with a vertical rolling disk as the billiard ball is one such system and is therefore recurrent for any choice of compact table-top. This thesis concludes with optimal control of hybrid systems. First, Hamilton-Jacobi is extended to the hybrid setting (nonholonomic constraints are not considered here) and the idea of completely integrable hybrid systems is introduced. It is shown that the usual billiard problem on a circular table is completely integrable. Finally, the hybrid Hamilton-Jacobi theory is extended to a hybrid Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman theory which allows for the study of optimal control problems.PHDApplied and Interdisciplinary MathematicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163071/1/wiclark_1.pd