Gimbal Lock

What’s Gimbal Lock?

Gimbal lock is the phenomenon of two rotational axis of an object pointing in the same direction. Actually, if two axis of the object become aligned, then we say that there’s a gimbal lock. In other words, a rotation in one axis could ‘override’ a rotation in another, making you lose a degree of freedom.

How Gimbal Lock occurred?

Generally speaking, it occurred when you rotate the object which only use Eular Angles to denote it. The reason for this is that Eular angles evaluate each axis independently in a set order. Let’s see a certain scene. First the object travels down the X axis. When that operation is complete it then travels down the Y axis, and finally the Z axis. The problem with gimbal lock occurs when you rotate the object down the Y axis, say 90 degrees. Since the X component has already been evaluated it doesn’t get carried along with the other two axis. What winds up happening is the X and Z axis get pointed down the same axis.

Here’s a pic showing what happened: 

Maybe it’s a bit difficult to understand. OK, let me show you a real sence.

Say that we have a telescope and a tripod to put the telescope on. The tripod is put on the ground. The top of the tripod holding the telescope is leveled with the horizon (reference plane) so that a vertical rotation axis (we call it X axis) is perfectly vertical to the ground plane. The telescope can then be rotated around 360 degrees in X axis so that it can scan the horizon in all the directions of the compass. Zero degrees azimuth is usually set toward a heading of true north. A second horizontal axis parallel to the ground plane (we call it Y axis), enables the telescope to be rotated in elevation upward or downward from the horizon. The horizon is usually set at zero degrees and the telescope can be rotated +90 degrees upward in elevation so that it is looking straight up toward the zenith or rotated -90 degrees downward so that it is looking vertically at the ground plane.

OK, that’s all we needed. every point in the sky (and the ground) can be referenced by only ONE unique pair of X and Y readings. For example an X of 90 degrees and Y of 45 degrees specifies a point exactly due east of the telescope and in a skyward direction half way up toward the zenith.

Now let me show you how the gimal lock occurred. We detect a high flying aircraft, near the horizon, due east from the telescope (X = 90 degrees, Y = 10 degrees) and we follow it (track it) as it comes directly toward us. The X angle stays at 90 degrees and the Y angle slowly increases. As the aircraft comes closer the Y angle increases more rapidly and just as the aircraft reaches an Y of 90 degrees (exactly overhead), it makes a sharp turn due south. We find that we cannot quickly move the telescope toward the south because the Y angle is exactly +90 degrees so we loose sight (loose track) of the aircraft . We have GIMBAL LOCK!

It’s a example of 2D coordinate frame. It’s very similar in 3D frame. We say that you have a vector which is parellel to the X axis. And we rotate it around  Y axis so that the vector is parellel to the Z axis. Then we find that any rotations around  Z axis will have no effect on the vector. We say that we have a GIMBAL LOCK

References

Quaternion Powers in GameDev.net

EularQuats in anticz.com

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