Smooth interpolation of orientation by rolling and wrapping for robot motion planning

This paper investigates a novel procedure to calculate smooth interpolation curves of the rotation group SO₃, which is commonly considered as the standard representation of rigid-body´s orientations. The algorithm is a combination of rolling and wrapping with the pull back/push forward technique. One remarkable advantage of this approach is that interpolation curves are given in closed form, which brings convenience for implementations on real-time control systems. A numerical example along with some visualization results is presented as well