collins@pnet02.gryphon.com (Steven Collins) (11/23/89)
A good place to get information on quaternions is from the book:
SPACECRAFT ATTITUDE DETERMINATION AND CONTROL
JAMES R WERTZ ed.
D. REIDEL PUB pub.
or drop me a line and I will send you a few pages of info to get you
started.
In general quaternions are best suited to dynamical problems.
It is faster to compose two quaternions than two rotation matricies but
it is slower to rotate points using quaternions than matrix math.
In my own amiga spacecraft dynamics simulation, I use quaternions to
to do the rotational dynamics computations and then convert the
resulting attitude quaternion into a matrix that my graphics system
uses to render the spacecraft (wireframe without hidden line removal...
but in STEREO! :-)
Steve Collins
Microcosm Inc.
2601 Airport Dr.
Suite 230
Torrance, CA
90505
"Because there's nothing worse than a spacecraft with an attitude problem..."
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