Discrete nonholonomic Lagrangian systems on Lie groupoids (Q948929)

The authors study the construction of geometric integrators for nonholonomic systems. A formalism for nonholonomic discrete Euler-Lagrange equations is developed in terms of Lie groupoids, specifying a discrete Lagrangian and a constraint submanifold. By using the unifying point of view of Lie groupoids, the authors recover all the previous methods in the literature and consider new cases of great importance in nonholonomic dynamics. Several examples are carefully studied illustrating the wide range of applications of the theory: the discrete nonholonomic constrained particle, the Suslov system, the Chaplygin sleigh, the Veselova system, the rolling ball on a rotating table and the two wheeled planar mobile robot. While the numerical treatment of holonomic systems has been studied extensively, nonholonomic systems have been much less studied. In this sense, this paper makes a very interesting and valuable theoretical contribution to the subject.