Kinematic controllability and motion planning for the snakeboard
Abstract
The snakeboard is shown to be kinematically controllable. Associated with the two decoupling vector fields for the problem, a constrained static nonlinear programming problem is posed whose solutions provide a solution to the problem of steering the snakeboard from a given configuration at rest to a desired configuration at rest. An explicit solution to the problem is provided, and the limitations of this explicit solution are discussed. A few ad hoc solutions to the nonlinear programming problem are also exhibited.