Nonholonomic systems describing the rolling of a rigid body on a plane and their relationship with various Poisson structures are considered. The notion of generalized conformally Hamiltonian representation of dynamical systems is introduced. In contrast to linear Poisson structures defined by Lie algebras and used in rigid-body dynamics, the Poisson structures of nonholonomic systems turn out to be nonlinear. They are also degenerate and the Casimir functions for them can be expressed in terms of complicated transcendental functions or not appear at all.

This is a survey of basic facts presently known about non-linear Poisson structures in the analysis of integrable systems in non-holonomic mechanics. It is shown that by using the theory of Poisson deformations it is possible to reduce various non-holonomic systems to dynamical systems on well-understood phase spaces equipped with linear Lie-Poisson brackets. As a result, not only can different non-holonomic systems be compared, but also fairly advanced methods of Poisson geometry and topology can be used for investigating them.

We discuss an embedding of a vector field for the nonholonomic Routh sphere into a subgroup of commuting Hamiltonian vector fields on six-dimensional phase space. The corresponding Poisson brackets are reduced to the canonical Poisson brackets on the Lie algebra $e^*$(3). It allows us to relate the nonholonomic Routh system with the Hamiltonian system on a cotangent bundle to the sphere with a canonical Poisson structure.

Wešdiscuss anšembedding ofšthe vector field associated with the nonholonomic Routh sphere inšsubgroup ofšthe commuting Hamiltonian vector fields associated with this system. Wešprove that the corresponding Poisson brackets are reduced tošcanonical ones inšthe region without ofšhomoclinic trajectories.