Rolling bodies with regular surface: Controllability theory and applications

Pairs of bodies with regular rigid surfaces rolling onto each other in spac e form a nonholonomic system of a rather general type, posing several inter esting control problems of which not much is known. The nonholonomy of such systems can be exploited in practical devices, which is very useful in rob otic applications. In order to achieve all potential benefits, a deeper und erstanding of these types of systems and more practical algorithms for plan ning and controlling their motions are necessary. In this paper, we study t he controllability aspect of this problem, giving a complete description of the reachable manifold for general pairs of bodies, and a constructive con trollability algorithm for planning rolling motions for dexterous robot han ds.