Representing Positions

Alarge part of robot kinematics is concerned with the establishment of various coordinate
systems to represent the positions and orientations of rigid object sand with transformations
among the secoordinate systems

the geometry of three-dimensional space and of

rigid motions plays a central role in all aspects of robotic manipulation

it is instructive to dis-tinguish between the two fundamental approaches to geometric reasoning: the
synthetic approach and the analytic approach

synthetic approach reasons directly about geomet-ric entities(e.g.,pointsorlines)

while synthetic approach represents these entities using
coordinates or equations, and reasoning is performed via algebraic manipulations.

In robotics,one typically uses analytic reasoning, since robot tasks are often defined ina
Cartesian workspace,using Cartesian coordinates.

Frame Rotations
Euler angles are a method to determine and represent the rotation of a body as expressed in a given
coordinate frame.

They are defined as three (chained) rotations relative to the three major axes of the coordinate frame.
Euler angles are typically representes as phi (φ) for x-axis rotation, theta (θ) for y-axis rotation, and psi
(ψ) for z-axis rotation. Any orientation can be described through a combination of these angles.

Euler angles represented for a multirotor aerial robot.

 ROTATIONAL TRANSFORMATIONS
In general, a rigid body in three-dimensional space has six degrees of freedom: three rotational and
three translational.

A conventional way to describe the position and orientation of a rigid body is to attach a frame to it.
After defining a reference coordinate system, the position and orientation of the rigid body are fully
described by the position of the frame's origin and the orientation of its axes, relative to the reference
frame.