Quaternions and dynamics

Abstract

We give a simple and self contained introduction to quaternions and their practical usage in dynamics. The rigid body dynamics are presented in full details. In the appendix, some more exotic relations are given that allow to write more complex models, for instance, the one of a satellite with inertial wheels and expressed in a non-inertial reference frame. As it is well known, one nice advantage of quaternions over Euler angles, beside the usual arguments, is that it allows to write down quite complex dynamics completely by hand.

22 pages, 2 figures

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