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On the mobility and efficiency of mechanical systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2007

Gershon Wolansky
Gershon Wolansky*
Affiliation:
Department of mathematics, Haifa 32000, Israel; gershonw@math.technion.ac.il
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Abstract

It is shown that self-locomotion is possible for a body in Euclidian space, provided its dynamics corresponds to a non-quadratic Hamiltonian, and that the body contains at least 3 particles. The efficiency of the driver of such a system is defined. The existence of an optimal (most efficient) driver is proved.


Keywords

Lagrangian mechanicsefficiencyself-locomotion
Type
Research Article
Information
ESAIM: Control, Optimisation and Calculus of Variations , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , October 2007 , pp. 657 - 668
Copyright
© EDP Sciences, SMAI, 2007

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