Visualizing Quaternion Multiplication

Jongchan Baek

doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2017.2705196

2017-01-01

Jongchan Baek

Gwangjin Kim

Soohee Han *

DOI：10.1109/ACCESS.2017.2705196

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摘要

En 中文

Quaternion rotation is a powerful tool for rotating vectors in 3-D; as a result, it has been used in various engineering fields, such as navigations, robotics, and computer graphics. However, understanding it geometrically remains challenging, because it requires visualizing 4-D spaces, which makes exploiting its physical meaning intractable. In this paper, we provide a new geometric interpretation of quaternion multiplication using a movable 3-D space model, which is useful for describing quaternion algebra in a visual way. By interpreting the axis for the scalar part of quaternion as a 1-D translation axis of 3-D vector space, we visualize quaternion multiplication and describe it as a combined effect of translation, scaling, and rotation of a 3-D vector space. We then present how quaternion rotation formulas and the derivative of quaternions can be formulated and described under the proposed approach.

Keyword:

4-dimensional spaces

geometry

scaling

quaternion rotation