sixdegreeoffreedom

Six degree of freedom, abbreviated 6DOF, is a concept describing the complete pose of a rigid body in three-dimensional space. It consists of three translational degrees of freedom along the x, y, and z axes and three rotational degrees of freedom about those axes—roll, pitch, and yaw. These six parameters together specify the body's position and orientation.

In robotics, aerospace, computer graphics, and virtual reality, 6DOF enables full spatial movement, distinguishing it from systems that track only position (3DOF) or only orientation. The term is commonly used to describe how an object can move and be oriented in 3D space, rather than a subset of motion.

Pose can be represented in several ways: a translation vector paired with a rotation representation such as a rotation matrix, Euler angles, or quaternions. Euler angles are intuitive but can suffer from gimbal lock; quaternions avoid this and are widely used in real-time systems for stable orientation tracking.

Applications of 6DOF include flight simulators, robotic manipulators, autonomous vehicles, camera pose estimation, and virtual or augmented reality tracking, where accurate capture of both position and orientation is essential for realism and control.

Implementation may rely on mechanical designs that provide three translational actuators plus three rotational joints, or on software models of a rigid body described by six generalized coordinates in free space. Tracking and sensing typically involve inertial measurement units, optical tracking with markers, or magnetic tracking systems to determine both position and orientation.