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From: Tim Wescott on 7 May 2010 13:26
One day a few years ago, while browsing through Powell's Technical Books
(a brain candy store for engineers), I ran across "On Quaternions and
Octonions: their geometry, arithmetic, and symmetry". I bought it,
thinking that it'd be a good how-to book on quaternion math. When I got
it home and read it, I realized that it's a monograph by mathematicians
for mathematicians. It's all about the pretty math -- but it really
doesn't do much for me in terms of giving me useful ways to use the
arithmetic in my day-to-day work.

It doesn't even have the funny quote about the role of reals, complex
numbers, quaternions and octonions by John Baez that you find in the
Wikipedia entry on octonions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octonion#Quotes.

So I ended up getting odds and ends from this book, that book, and not a
few Wikipedia articles.

But it'd be really nice to have a good book that deals with real-world
use of quaternions, particularly if it dwells on the subject of using
them as a handy representation for rotations in 3D space (which is the
biggest -- or perhaps only -- real world application for them). Even if
the book is all about video game development; if it has a dynamite
chapter on quaternion math that'll be enough.

Does anyone know of such a book? I can put it on my Christmas list...

--
Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com
From: Rune Allnor on 7 May 2010 13:32
On 7 Mai, 19:26, Tim Wescott <t...(a)seemywebsite.now> wrote:
> One day a few years ago, while browsing through Powell's Technical Books
> (a brain candy store for engineers), I ran across "On Quaternions and
> Octonions: their geometry, arithmetic, and symmetry".  I bought it,
> thinking that it'd be a good how-to book on quaternion math.  When I got
> it home and read it, I realized that it's a monograph by mathematicians
> for mathematicians.  It's all about the pretty math -- but it really
> doesn't do much for me in terms of giving me useful ways to use the
> arithmetic in my day-to-day work.
>
> It doesn't even have the funny quote about the role of reals, complex
> numbers, quaternions and octonions by John Baez that you find in the
> Wikipedia entry on octonions:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octonion#Quotes..
>
> So I ended up getting odds and ends from this book, that book, and not a
> few Wikipedia articles.
>
> But it'd be really nice to have a good book that deals with real-world
> use of quaternions, particularly if it dwells on the subject of using
> them as a handy representation for rotations in 3D space (which is the
> biggest -- or perhaps only -- real world application for them).  Even if
> the book is all about video game development; if it has a dynamite
> chapter on quaternion math that'll be enough.
>
> Does anyone know of such a book?  I can put it on my Christmas list...

This one might work:

http://www.amazon.com/Quaternions-Rotation-Sequences-Applications-Aerospace/dp/0691102988/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273253364&sr=8-1

I don't like it too much, as it mixes and matches matrix formulations
and quaternion formulations somewhat awkwardly. It seems the author
first wrote two texts, one based on matrices and one on quaternions,
and then more or less shuffled the chapters without attempting to
edit
everything into one, comprehensive coherent text.

Apart from that...

Rune
From: Greg Berchin on 7 May 2010 13:43
On Fri, 07 May 2010 10:26:53 -0700, Tim Wescott <tim(a)seemywebsite.now> wrote:

>But it'd be really nice to have a good book that deals with real-world
>use of quaternions, particularly if it dwells on the subject of using
>them as a handy representation for rotations in 3D space (which is the
>biggest -- or perhaps only -- real world application for them). Even if
>the book is all about video game development; if it has a dynamite
>chapter on quaternion math that'll be enough.

I don't have a book recommendation, but I do recall from my inertial navigation
days that quaternions were used extensively there. That association might lead
to some targeted search criteria.

Greg
From: Tim Wescott on 7 May 2010 14:27
Greg Berchin wrote:
> On Fri, 07 May 2010 10:26:53 -0700, Tim Wescott <tim(a)seemywebsite.now> wrote:
>
>> But it'd be really nice to have a good book that deals with real-world
>> use of quaternions, particularly if it dwells on the subject of using
>> them as a handy representation for rotations in 3D space (which is the
>> biggest -- or perhaps only -- real world application for them). Even if
>> the book is all about video game development; if it has a dynamite
>> chapter on quaternion math that'll be enough.
>
> I don't have a book recommendation, but I do recall from my inertial navigation
> days that quaternions were used extensively there. That association might lead
> to some targeted search criteria.

Much of what I got came from "Strapdown Inertial Navigation Technology"
(Titterton & Weston, AIAA 2004) -- but that was just one section of one
chapter on angular representations. The bulk of what I'm actually using
came from various Wikipedia articles and how-to bits from game developers.

--
Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com
From: Roy on 7 May 2010 18:42
Visualizing quaternions By Andrew J. Hanson seems pretty good, but
somewhat oriented toward computer graphics. Its available on Safari
books on-line, if that matters. I also own Kuipers, which isn't bad
but lacks some algorithms, IIRC.

- Roy



On May 7, 2:27 pm, Tim Wescott <t...(a)seemywebsite.now> wrote:
> Greg Berchin wrote:
> > On Fri, 07 May 2010 10:26:53 -0700, Tim Wescott <t...(a)seemywebsite.now> wrote:
>
> >> But it'd be really nice to have a good book that deals with real-world
> >> use of quaternions, particularly if it dwells on the subject of using
> >> them as a handy representation for rotations in 3D space (which is the
> >> biggest -- or perhaps only -- real world application for them).  Even if
> >> the book is all about video game development; if it has a dynamite
> >> chapter on quaternion math that'll be enough.
>
> > I don't have a book recommendation, but I do recall from my inertial navigation
> > days that quaternions were used extensively there.  That association might lead
> > to some targeted search criteria.
>
> Much of what I got came from "Strapdown Inertial Navigation Technology"
> (Titterton & Weston, AIAA 2004) -- but that was just one section of one
> chapter on angular representations.  The bulk of what I'm actually using
> came from various Wikipedia articles and how-to bits from game developers..
>
> --
> Tim Wescott
> Control system and signal processing consultingwww.wescottdesign.com

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