A rational Rodrigues' formula to interpolate rotations

Abstract

We propose a rational version of the classic Rodrigues' rotation formula, which leads to a more accurate and efficient modelling of rotations and their derivatives in finite precision arithmetic. We explain how the rational Rodrigues' formula can be used to describe the kinematics of rigid bodies, in a practical example in which we model the rotation of a cell phone using the data obtained from its gyroscope.

arXiv commentThis paper has been withdraw by me, the author, because it is premature and can be improved significantly. Moreover, after posting the article I found several articles in which similar ideas are described and it would be more appropriate to write the article as a survey of these other articles rather than as if its content were new