Help me visualize Attitude Dynamics please?

Hello everyone, I would like to graph 2, 3 axis reference frames, with all three axes orthogonal on each and the same origin. The catch is, I want the axes to be separated by angles, where a 3x3 matrix of Euler Angles could be used to describe the orientation of one reference frame to the other.

I want to use this to display the effectiveness of different methods of attitude estimation to a "known" value.

If someone would please point me in the right direction I would be very grateful: I am not looking to be spoon-fed the answer, rather I would like someone to direct me to where I would find the answer and learn how to solve this problem for myself.

Thanks,

Matt

Answer 1

[Mischa Kim]

Based on your information I assume this is about visualizing (animating) the rotation of one reference frame relative to another. If that's all to it, I recommend looking into using the Simulink 3D Animation Toolbox. In your Simulink model add a VR Sink block and open it to access the 3D World Editor to build a virtual reality, which, in your case, would consist of two reference frames, only.

Simply use (right-click) ROOT > Insert from… > Component Library… > Shapes > Triad twice to insert two triads to represent your reference frames (you might want to change the color appearance of one of the frames to distinguish it from the other). Once you are done you need to "enable" the rotation property of one of the reference frames to be able to change the rotation from within your Simulink model.

Note that the VR property rotation is a 4-vector, where the first 3 elements are the rotation vector and the last element is the rotation angle.