Rotacija z enotskim kvaternionom ( = Rotation with unit quaternion)

Abstract

A quaternion is a hyper-complex number. A rule for quaternion multiplications allows us to use it as a rotation in three-dimensional space. The aim of this article is to present quaternion rotations to the Slovene professional geodetic public. Quaternions are described in the article along with the manner to use them for rotations. Two experiments were performed to compare the rotations using quaternions versus rotations with Euler angles. The experiments revealed that transformations using quaternion are more efficient than transformations using Euler angles. An adjustment for the determination of transformation parameters is also more efficient if the mathematical model is based on quaternion rotation.

Keywords

• quaternion
• transformation
• rotation
• Euler angles
• computational efficiency