Geometric Mechanics

This book illustrates the broad range of Jerry Marsden’s mathematical legacy in areas of geometry, mechanics, and dynamics, from very pure mathematics to very applied, but always with a geometric perspective. The unified treatment of the wide breadth of topics treated in this book will be of interest to both experts and novices in geometric mechanics.

The primary emphasis of this book is the modeling, analysis, and control of mechanical systems. The methods and results presented can be applied to a large class of mechanical control systems, including applications in robotics, autonomous vehicle control, and multi-body systems. The book is unique in that it presents a unified, rather than an inclusive, treatment of control theory for mechanical systems. A distinctive feature of the presentation is its reliance on techniques from differential and Riemannian geometry.