Rigid body dynamics algorithms

''Robot Dynamics Algorithms, Second Edition'' presents the subject of computational rigid-body dynamics through the medium of spatial (6D) vector notation. It explains how to model a rigid-body system and how to analyze it. The book is a comprehensive collection of the best rigid-body dynamics algorithms in a single source. This second edition includes nearly twice the content of the previous edition with algorithms shown explicitly in pseudocode and laid out in tables for easy implementation. It also has more algorithms than the previous edition including algorithms that exploit sparse matrices and ones for kinematic loops. New material on the mathematics of spatial (6D) vectors and how to analyze rigid-body systems using spatial vectors is covered. Finally there is an entire chapter devoted to how to build computer-oriented models of rigid-body systems.This book is for engineers with knowledge of rigid-body dynamics who are interested in calculating the dynamics of a rigid-body system. It is both an algorithms recipe book as well as a guide to the analysis and deeper understanding of rigid-body systems.