Dynamics of the Chaplygin sleigh on a cylinder

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the motion of the Chaplygin sleigh on the surface of a circular cylinder. In the case of inertial motion, the problem reduces to the study of the dynamical system on a (two-dimensional) torus and to the classification of singular points. Particular cases in which the system admits an invariant measure are found.

In the case of a balanced and dynamically symmetric Chaplygin sleigh moving in a gravitational field it is shown that on the average the system has no drift along the vertical.