Conversion between quaternions and Euler angles: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:46, 20 August 2007

Revision as of 23:01, 28 September 2007

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{{Mergeto|rotation representation (mathematics)|date=November 2006}}

Spatial rotations in three dimensions can be [[Coordinate system|parametrized]] using both [[Euler angles]] and [[Quaternions and spatial rotation|unit quaternions]]. This article explains how to convert between the two representations. Actually this simple use of "quaternions" was first presented by [[Leonhard Euler|Euler]] some seventy years earlier than [[William Rowan Hamilton|Hamilton]] to solve the problem of [[magic square]]s. For this reason the dynamics community commonly refers to quaternions in this application as "Euler parameters".