Robotics

Net rotation angle of two composed 90-degree rotations

mediumnumerical

Practice question

A rigid body is first rotated by 90∘90^\circ about the world zz-axis, and then rotated by 90∘90^\circ about the world xx-axis (i.e. the second rotation is applied as R=Rx(90∘) Rz(90∘)R = R_x(90^\circ)\,R_z(90^\circ)).

The composition is itself a single rotation about some axis by an angle θ\theta. Using the identity tr⁡(R)=1+2cos⁡θ\operatorname{tr}(R) = 1 + 2\cos\theta, compute the net rotation angle θ\theta in degrees.

degrees