- Rodrigues' rotation formula
In
geometry , Rodrigues' rotation formula (named afterOlinde Rodrigues ) is a vector formula for a rotation in space, given its axis and angle of rotation.Say u,v R3 and we want to obtain a representation for the rotation vrot of the vector v around the vector u (which is assumed to have unit length) by an angle θ in the counterclockwise (i.e. positive) direction. Rodrigues' formula reads as follows:
Proof of the formula
Take the vector w = v − <u,v>u, which is the projection of v on the plane orthogonal to u, and the cross product of the vectors u and v: z = u×v. Turn the vector w by the angle θ around the base of the vector u to obtain the projection of the rotated vector vrot:
Notice that both the vectors w and z have the same length: |w|,|z| = |v - <u,v>u|, because the vector u is of unit length. To get the rotated vector v, we have to add back the adjustment <u,v>u. Hence
which is exactly what we were looking for.
Using the annotation for the scalar product, we get:
Substituting the cross product with matrix multiplication:
and multiplying with the identity matrix "I", we get
where the expression in the paranthesis can be identified as the rotation matrix "R":
External links
For another descriptive example see www.d6.com, Chris Hecker, physics section, part 4. "The Third Dimension" -- on page 3, section ``Axis and Angle", http://www.d6.com/users/checker/pdfs/gdmphys4.pdf
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