On the movement of the Chaplygin sleigh on a horizontal plane with dry friction

Abstract

The study of dynamics, as well as the design of autonomous planetary rovers, is an urgent and important task. Recently, in the context of the development of robotic systems and mobile vehicles, the relevance of such systems has increased. Various rover designs are proposed and studied: wheeled, walking, jumping, etc., depending on the objectives of the study, the environment, the surface of the planet, etc. Reliability of such autonomous vehicles is the key element for the safety of planetary missions.This work is devoted to the study of the dynamics of a mechanical system called the Chaplygin sleigh, which is of independent interest, since it has a relatively simple mathematical model. At the same time, the proposed model is in some ways a simplification of a wide class of vehicles. The paper proposes a study of the influence of the Coulomb friction forces on the dynamics of such a system. A simple mathematical model makes it possible to qualitatively study the motion of such systems on surfaces under the condition of sliding of contact points. The results of the work can be useful for understanding the dynamics, as well as for the design of planetary rovers with a similar design, as well as for the design of planetary rovers moving on the surfaces of ice planets.