Lie group variational integrators for rigid body problems using quaternions

Abstract: Rigid body dynamics on the rotation group have typically been represented in terms of rotation matrices, unit quaternions, or local coordinates, such as Euler angles. Due to the coordinate singularities associated with local coordinate charts, it is common in engineering applications to adopt the unit quaternion representation, and the numerical simulations typically impose the unit length condition using constraints or by normalization at each step. From the perspective of geometric structure-preserving, such approaches are undesirable as they are either computationally less efficient, or interfere with the preservation of other geometric properties of the dynamics. In this paper, we adopt the approach used in constructing Lie group variational integrators for rigid body dynamics on the rotation group to the representation in terms of unit quaternions. In particular, the rigid body dynamics is lifted to unit quaternions, and the Lie group structure of unit quaternions is used to represent tangent vector intrinsically, thereby avoiding the use of a Lagrange multiplier. A Lie group variational integrator in the unit quaternion representation is derived, and numerical results are presented.