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OSVR has a right-handed system: x is right, y is up, z is near.

I need to convert orientation data from a sensor in OSVR to a different right-handed system in which x is forward, y is left, and z is up.

I need to calculate the transformation that will convert a quaternion from one system to the other.

I naively tried:

void osvrPoseCallback(const geometry_msgs::PoseStampedConstPtr &msg) { // osvr to ros geometry_msgs::PoseStamped outputMsg; outputMsg.header = msg->header; outputMsg.pose.orientation.x = msg->pose.orientation.y; outputMsg.pose.orientation.y = msg->pose.orientation.z; outputMsg.pose.orientation.z = msg->pose.orientation.x; outputMsg.pose.orientation.w = msg->pose.orientation.w; osvrPosePub.publish(outputMsg); ros::spinOnce(); }

But that made things really weird. Facing north pitch is pitch, facing west, pitch is yaw, facing south, pitch is negative pitch...

How can I convert my OSVR quaternion to the a corresponding quaternion in the new coordinate system?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Shoot, you're right! I got thrown off. Yes, both systems are right handed. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Apr 28, 2017 at 21:18

1 Answer 1

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Summarizing your two coordinate spaces:

direction OSVR Output ------------------------------ right x -y up y z backward z -x

And since they're both right-handed, the sign of the angles does not change.

So to map from OSVR to the output coordinate system, we just map the letters as above:

outputMsg.pose.orientation.x = -1 * msg->pose.orientation.z; outputMsg.pose.orientation.y = -1 * msg->pose.orientation.x; outputMsg.pose.orientation.z = msg->pose.orientation.y; outputMsg.pose.orientation.w = msg->pose.orientation.w;

Or, to go the other way and convert into OSVR's system, we flip it:

outputMsg.pose.orientation.x = -1 * msg->pose.orientation.y; outputMsg.pose.orientation.y = msg->pose.orientation.z; outputMsg.pose.orientation.z = -1 * msg->pose.orientation.x; outputMsg.pose.orientation.w = msg->pose.orientation.w;
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  • \$\begingroup\$ I did the math too and this answer seems correct to me. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Sep 1, 2017 at 23:01

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