Controllability results for the rolling of 2-dimensional against 3-dimensional Riemannian manifolds. I (Q2240787)

The present paper is the first part of a geometrical study of controllability issues associated with the rolling under constraints of non-spinning and non-slipping of two smooth connected and oriented Riemannian manifolds $(M, g)$ and $(M', g')$ of dimensions $n=2$ and $n'=3$ and of Riemannian curvature tensors $R$ and $R'$ respectively. The considerations of the authors are based on the theory of differentiable manifolds and Lie algebras and interesting controllability results are obtained.