Reconstructing a rotor from initial and final frames using characteristic multivectors: With applications in orthogonal transformations

If an initial frame of vectors {ei}$$ \left\{{e}_i\right\} $$ is related to a final frame of vectors {fi}$$ \left\{{f}_i\right\} $$ by, in geometric algebra (GA) terms, a rotor, or in linear algebra terms, an orthogonal transformation, we often want to find this rotor given the initial and final sets of vectors. One very common example is finding a rotor or orthogonal matrix representing rotation, given knowledge of initial and transformed points.In this paper, we discuss methods in the literature for recovering such rotors and then outline a GA method, which generalises to cases of any signature and any dimension, and which is not restricted to orthonormal sets of vectors. The proof of this technique is both concise and elegant and uses the concept of characteristic multivectors as discussed in the book by Hestenes and Sobczyk, which contains a treatment of linear algebra using geometric algebra. Expressing orthogonal transformations as rotors, enables us to create fractional transformations and we discuss this for some classic transforms. In real applications, our initial and/or final sets of vectors will be noisy. We show how to use the characteristic multivector method to find a 'best fit' rotor between these sets and compare our results with other methods.

Automated summary

This paper discusses methods for finding the rotor that connects an initial set of vectors to a final set of vectors. By using the characteristic multivector method in geometric algebra, we can find the best fit rotor and compare results with other methods in real applications.