Duality on Geodesics of Cartan Distributions and Sub-Riemannian Pseudo-Product Structures

Abstract

Given a five dimensional space endowed with a Cartan distribution, the abnormal geodesics form another five dimensional space with a cone structure. Then it is shown in (15), that, if the cone structure is regarded as a control system, then the space of abnormal geodesics of the cone structure is naturally identified with the original space. In this paper, we provide an exposition on the duality by abnormal geodesics in a wider framework, namely, in terms of quotients of control systems and sub-Riemannian pseudo-product structures. Also we consider the controllability of cone structures and describe the constrained Hamiltonian equations on normal and abnormal geodesics.

Keywords

• control systems
• abnormal geodesics
• optimal control problems