Control of Nonholonomic Systems: from Sub-Riemannian Geometry to Motion Planning

1 Geometry of nonholonomic systems.- 2 First-order theory.- 3 Nonholonomic motion planning.- 4 Appendix A: Composition of flows of vector fields.- 5 Appendix B: The different systems of privileged coordinates.

"The main objective of the book under review is to introduce the readers to nonholonomic systems from the point of view of control theory. ... the book is a concise survey of the methods for motion planning of nonholonomic control systems by means of nilpotent approximation. It contains both the theoretical background and the explicit computational algorithms for solving this problem." (I. Zelenko, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. 53 (1), January, 2016)

"This book is nicely done and provides an introduction to the motion planning problem and its associated mathematical theory that should be beneficial to theorists in nonlinear control theory. The exposition is concise, but at the same time clear and carefully developed." (Kevin A. Grasse, Mathematical Reviews, August, 2015)