Construction of a programmed trajectory in the configuration space of rotations for solving the problem of the solid rotation

Abstract

The paper proposes method of programmed control based on the concept of solving the inverse dynamic problem. As a configurational space of rotations, it is proposed to consider a sphere with a radius of 2 π in the three-dimensional Euclidean space, which is the image of the unit Sp(1) quaternions. A linear relationship has been established between the angular velocity vector of a solid in its spherical motion and the velocity of a point in a sphere allowing to relate the rotation of a solid to the motion of a point inside a three-dimensional sphere. This approach allows to clearly interpret the spherical motion of a solid by the movement of a point inside this sphere, which is used by the authors to describe the rotation of a solid at arbitrary given boundary conditions for angular positions, velocities and accelerations. An example of a smooth turn from one position to another in the case when the turn is set in the sphere in the form of a polynomial of the fifth degree is given. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.