ABSTRACT
In 1961, Professor Thomas Kane of Stanford University published a paper entitled “Dynamics of Nonholonomic Systems” [1] that described a method for formulating equations of motion for complex dynamical systems that was equally applicable to either holonomic or nonholonomic systems. As opposed to the use of Lagrange’s equations, this new method allowed dynamical equations to be generated without the differentiation of kinetic and potential energy functions and, for nonholonomic systems, without the need to introduce Lagrange multipliers. This method was later complemented by the publication in 1965 of a paper by Kane and Wang entitled “On the Derivation of Equations of Motion” [2] that described the use of motion variables (later called generalized speeds) that could be any combinations of the time derivatives of the generalized coordinates that describe the configuration of a system. These two papers laid the foundation for what has since become known as Kane’s method for formulating dynamical equations.
