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what are quaternions and how can I use them?

asked 2011-05-17 09:59:45 -0600

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I have seen quaternions in tf and bullet but I don't know what they are or how to use them.

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answered 2011-05-17 10:00:35 -0600

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This post is a wiki. Anyone with karma >75 is welcome to improve it.

Quaternions are a representation of orientation wikipedia

For advanced concepts there's an extensive reference written by Erik Dam

There's a good primer on the ogre website.

O.Khatib lectures (from Stanford) on introduction to robotics are freely available from the iTunes U store and can be accessed here. There is a part elaborating on rotation representations.

There's also a great tutorial at https://eater.net/quaternions

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I encourage to learn the mathematical concept before going on. Wikipedia may serve for this purpose, as KoenBuys said.

aimc gravatar image aimc  ( 2013-03-03 03:05:05 -0600 )edit
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answered 2017-08-09 18:13:27 -0600

AndyZe gravatar image

updated 2017-12-20 08:58:16 -0600

I started a ROS tutorial. Hopefully others will add to it.

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answered 2011-06-17 01:30:15 -0600

Bemfica gravatar image

Just to complement the idea. A dual quaternion can be used to define a rigid body rotation AND translation of an angle θ about an axis u through the origin. I realy don't known which kind of quaternion is implemented in TF, maybe just the rotational.

Here you can found an interresting web site about quaternions. And here a very good paper with a tutorial and a real application.

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A ROS pose is the position as xyz and a quaternion for rotation.
dornhege gravatar image dornhege  ( 2011-06-17 02:50:33 -0600 )edit

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Asked: 2011-05-17 09:59:45 -0600

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Last updated: Jan 29 '21