rotation, quaternions, etc.

i always have to look this stuff up when i need it, so i found a great ref here. from the abstract: We present the three main mathematical constructs used to represent the attitude of a rigid body in three- dimensional space. These are (1) the rotation matrix, (2) a triple of Euler angles, and (3) the unit quaternion. To these we add a fourth, the rotation vector, which has many of the bene¯ts of both Euler angles and quaternions, but neither the singularities of the former, nor the quadratic constraint of the latter. There are several other subsidiary representations, such as Cayley-Klein parameters and the axis-angle representation, whose relations to the three main representations are also described. Our exposition is catered to those who seek a thorough and uni¯ed reference on the whole subject; detailed derivations of some results are not presented. Keywords{Euler angles, quaternion, Euler-Rodrigues parameters, Cayley-Klein parameters, rotation matrix, di- rection cosine matrix, transformation matrix, Cardan angles, Tait-Bryan angles, nautical angles, rotation vector, orientation, attitude, roll, pitch, yaw, bank, heading, spin, nutation, precession, Slerp 1