Description
Condition
VERY GOOD: This book is in very good condition, showing only the slightest signs of use. It was printed on acid-free paper.
Product Details
From the back cover: “Today, [quaternion equations] are used in applications as various as describing the geometry of spacetime, guiding the Space Shuttle, and developing computer applications for virtual reality. In this book, Jack B. Kuipers introduces quaternions for scientists and engineers who have not encountered them before and shows how they can be used in a variety of practical situations.
“The book is primarily an exposition of the quaternion, a 4-tuple, and its primary application in a rotation operator. But Kuipers also presents the more conventional and familiar 3 x 3 (9-element) matrix rotation operator. These parallel presentations allow the read to judge which approaches are preferable for specific applications.
“The volume is divined into three main parts. The opening chapters present introductory material and establish the book’s terminology and notation. The next part presents the mathematical properties of quaternions, including quaternion algebra and geometry. It includes more advanced special topics in spherical trigonometry, along with an introduction to quaternion calculus and perturbation theory, both of which are required in many situations involving dynamics and kinematics. In the final section, Kuipers discusses state-of-the-art applications. He presents a six-degree-of-freedom, electromagnetic, position-or-orientation transducer and concludes by discussing the computer graphics necessary for the development of applications for virtual reality.”
Chapters
- Historical Matters
- Algebraic Preliminaries
- Rotations in 3-space
- Rotation Sequences in R3
- Quaternion Algebra
- Quaternion Geometry
- Algorithm Summary
- Quaternion Factors
- More Quaternion Applications
- Spherical Trigonometry
- Quaternion Calculus for Kinematics and Dynamics
- Rotations in Phase Space
- A Quaternion Process
- Computer Graphics
The book concludes with Further Reading and References and Index.