Active versus passive transformations in robotics

Most current texts on robotics use the passive approach, where the rigid body has a coordinate frame embedded in it, and then its position and orientation is given by the coordinate transformation from the world frame to a frame moving with the body. If there are several bodies carrying several different frames, it can be hard to account for all the different frames. On the other hand, active approach has only a single fixed coordinate frame. The position and orientation of a rigid body is specified by the transformation, which moves the body from its home position to its current position. It is therefore more convenient for students and teachers to use the active view which has only a single frame compared to passive which has multiple frames. ©2006 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.