midrotation

Midrotation is a term used to describe the halfway point in a rotation, typically about a fixed axis. In a physical rotation where a body moves from an initial orientation to a final orientation with a given angular displacement, the midrotation occurs at the moment halfway through the angular change. For a full turn, this corresponds to 180 degrees, and in general it is the orientation reached after half of the total rotation has been accomplished.

In physics and mathematics, midrotation is a descriptive concept rather than a separate phenomenon. It depends on the chosen reference frame and the total rotation under consideration. When rotations are uniform, midrotation can be identified by the time or angle halfway along the rotation path. In three dimensions, the actual intermediate orientation can be affected by the representation used to describe rotation (for example, Euler angles, rotation matrices, or quaternions).

Applications and usage: In robotics and computer animation, midrotation often refers to the pose or orientation reached halfway through a commanded rotation from a starting pose to a target pose. It can be useful for planning, easing, or defining intermediate keyframes. In practice, the midrotation orientation is most robustly computed via rotation representations that support smooth interpolation, such as quaternions, rather than simple additive angle measures.

See also: Rotation, angular displacement, angular velocity, interpolation, quaternions.