qrotate

The qrotate crate provides Quaternion representations of rotations of 3-element vectors representing points in 3-dimensional space. 3-element vectors can use rust standard library types, or vectors from the ndarray crate.





Copyright (c) 2023 Steven Michael (ssmichael@gmail.com)


Overview


Quaternion rotations are represented as multiply (*) operations, and possible on the following repersentations of 3D vectors, where T is a template parameter matching a floating-point type, f32 or f64.


||| | ------------: |:-------------| | [T; 3] | 3-element fixed-size array | | &[T; 3] | Reference to 3-element fixed size array |
| &[T] | Slice containing 3 elements | | std::vec::Vec<T> | standard library vector with 3 elements | | &std::vec::Vec<T> | Reference to standard library vector with 3 elements | | ndarray::Array1<'a, T> | 1D array from ndarray crate (with ndarray feature enabled) | | ndarray::ArrayView1<'a, T> | View into 1D array from ndarray crate (with ndarray feature enabled)|


Quaternions can also be multiplied with other quaternions via the * operator to represent a concatenation of rotations.

The above operations are also defined to work when used by a reference to a quaternion.

Note: this quaternion represetntation uses the "conventional" definition of a quaternion, which when constructed from an axis and and angle, defines a right-handed rotation of a vector about the given axis by the given angle.





Examples


Simple Rotation

Rotation of the x-axis unit vector about the z axis by π/2 use std::f64::consts::PI; let xhat = [1.0, 0.0, 0.0]; let yhat = qrotate::Quaternion::<f64>>rotz(PI / 2.0) * xhat // yhat = [0.0, 1.0, 0.0];

Concatenated Rotations

Rotation of the x-axis unit vector about z axis by π/2 then y axis by π/3 use std::f64::consts::PI; let xhat = [1.0, 0.0, 0.0]; let q1 = qrotate::Quaternion::<f64>::rotz(PI / 2.0); let q2 = qrotate::Quaternion::<f64>::roty(PI / 3.0); let result q2 * q1 * xhat

Find quaternion to rotate between two vectors

Find quaterion that rotates from xhat vector to yhat vector let xhat = [1.0, 0.0, 0.0]; let yhat = [0.0, 1.0, 0.0]; let q = qrotation::qv1tov2(&xhat, &yhat);


Direction-Cosine Matrix

Represent quaternion as a direction-cosine matrix (DCM) that left-multiplies a vector to perform a rotation or a direction-cosine matrix that right-multiples a 2D (Nx3) column matrix to perform a rotation ``` use std::f64::consts::PI; let q = qrotate::Quaternion::::rotz(PI / 2.0);

// get [[f64; 3]; 3] representation of quaternion as DCM // that left-multiples row vector let dcm = q.ldcm();

// Same thing, excpet DCM as ndarray::Array2 let dcmndarr = q.ldcmndarr();

// Same thing, except DCM as ndarray::Array2 // that right-multiplies column vector let dcmndarr = q.rdcmndarr(); ```

Convert Direction-Cosine Matrix (DCM) to quaternion ``` use std::f64::consts::PI; let q = qrotate::Quaternion::::rotz(PI / 2.0);

// get [[f64; 3]; 3] representation of quaternion as DCM // that left-multiples row vector let dcm = q.ldcm();

// Convert back to quaternion let q2 = Quaternion::::from_ldcm(dcm); ```


Axis, Angle

Convert quaternion to and from axis and angle of rotation representations // Construct quaternion representing rotation about zhat axis by PI/2 let zhat = [0.0, 1.0, 0.0] let theta = std::f64::consts::PI / 2.0; let q = Quaternion::<f64>::from_axis_angle(zhat, theta); // Result is same as zhat let axis: [f64; 3] = q.axis(); // result is PI / 2.0 let angle: f64 = q.angle();

Other Operations

Miscelaneous operations below ``` // Construct identity quaternion (no rotation) let mut q = Quaternion::::identity();

// now rotate about y axis q = Quaternion::::qroty(0.1) * q;

// Get conjugate let qc = q.conjugate();

// Get quaternion norm (should be 1.0 most of the time) let n = q.norm();

// Scale quaternion q = q * 2.0;

// Get normalized version of quaternion let qn = q.normalized();

// Normalize quaternion in place q.normalize();

// Get vector elements of quaternion let v: [f64; 3] = q.vector();

// Get scalar elements of quaternion let w: f64 = q.scalar(); ```


Python Bindings

By enabling the python feature, the crate also has the option to compile into a python library. The library makes available a "Quaternion" class which can be used to rotate 3-element NumPy vectors (and each element of a Nx3 NumPy "matrix"). Many of the functions described above are available in python