The car with N Trailers : characterization of the singular configurations

In this paper we study the problem of the car with N trailers. It was proved in previous works ([9], [12]) that when each trailer is perpendicular with the previous one the degree of nonholonomy is Fn+3 (the (n+3)-th term of the Fibonacci's sequence) and that when no two consecutive trailers are perpendicular this degree is n+2. We compute here by induction the degree of non holonomy in every state and obtain a partition of the singular set by this degree of non-holonomy. We give also for each area a set of vector fields in the Lie Algebra of the control system wich makes a basis of the tangent space.