Quaternions and Rotation Sequences

The book is an exposition of the quaternion, a 4-tuple, and its primary application in a rotation operator. But Kuipers also presents the more conventional and familiar 3 x 3 (9-element) matrix rotation operator. These parallel presentations allow the reader to judge which approaches are preferable for specific applications. The first part present introductory material and establish the book's terminology and notation. The next part presents the mathematical properties of quaternions, including quaternion algebra and geometry. It includes more advanced special topics in spherical trigonometry, along with an introduction to quaternion calculus and perturbation theory, required in many situations involving dynamics and kinematics. In the last part, Kuipers discusses state-of-the-art applications. He presents a six degree-of-freedom electromagnetic position and orientation transducer and concludes by discussing the computer graphics necessary for the development of applications in virtual reality.