Search

To be a quantitative and testable tectonic model, plate tectonics requires spherical geometry and spherical kinematics in terms of finite rotations conveniently parametrized by their angle and axis and described by unit quaternions. In treatises on "Plate Tectonics" infinitesimal, instantaneous, and finite rotations, absolute and relative rotations are said to be applied to model the motion of tectonic plates. Even though these terms are strictly defined in mathematics, they are often casually used in geosciences. Here, their definitions are recalled and clarified as well as the terms rotation, orientation, and location on the sphere. For instance, infinitesimal rotations refer to a mathematical limit, when the angle of rotation tends to zero. Their rules do not apply to finite rotations, no matter how small their finite angles of rotation are. Mathematical approaches applying appropriate and feasible assumptions to model spherical motion of tectonic plates over geological times of hundreds of millions of years are derived including (i) sequences of incremental finite rotations, (ii) sequences of accumulating successive concatenations of finite rotations, and (iii) continuous rotations in terms of fully transient quaternions. The incremental and the accumulating approaches provide complementary views. While the relative Euler pole appears to migrate in the latter, it appears fixed in the former. Path, mean, and instantaneous velocity of the migrating Euler pole are derived as well as the angular and trajectoral velocity of the rotational motion about it. The approaches are illustrated by a geological example with actual data and a numerical yet geologically inspired example with artificial data. The former revisits the three‐plate scenario with stationary axes of two "absolute" rotations implying transient "relative" rotations about a migrating Euler pole and employs a proper plate‐circuit argument to determine them numerically without resorting to approximations. The latter applies an involved interplay of incremental and accumulating modeling inducing split–join cycles to approximate sinusoidal trajectories as reported to record plates' motion during the Gondwana breakup. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dual quaternion plays an advantageous role in the field of robotic kinematics and dynamics due to its compact expression. It is well known that quaternion can be easily implemented as algebraic operations on vectors through matrix operators. Similarly, the dual matrix operators can convert dual quaternion operations to matrix operations. However, it has not received adequate attention, and thus there are very few applications at present. With the dual matrix operators of dual quaternion, this paper re-verifies the equivalency between the conjugate formula of unit dual quaternion and dual Euler–Rodrigues formula. To combine this equivalence with the homomorphic mapping of Lie groups, a theoretical correlation of the current hand-eye calibration methods is established. Motivated by the attempt to establish a more complete scheme for hand-eye calibration, a new simultaneous method based on the conjugate formula of dual quaternion is proposed. The method verifies that the rotation problem can be extended to the rigid-body transformation problem via the dual algebra. Finally, the simulation and experimental validations for the hand–eye calibration method are given. • The conjugate formula of unit dual quaternion is re-verified via the dual operations. • A new simultaneous method is defined for hand-eye calibration. • The theoretical correlation with the existing methods is established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]