Eigen - Re-orthogonalization of Rotation Matrix

Question

After multiplying a lot of rotation matrices, the end result might not be a valid rotation matrix any more, due to rounding issues (de-orthogonalized)

One way to re-

Answer 1

You can use a QR decomposition to systematically re-orthogonalize, where you replace the original matrix with the Q factor. In the library routines you have to check and correct, if necessary, by negating the corresponding column in Q, that the diagonal entries of R are positive (close to 1 if the original matrix was close to orthogonal).

The closest rotation matrix Q to a given matrix is obtained from the polar or QP decomposition, where P is a positive semi-definite symmetric matrix. The QP decomposition can be computed iteratively or using a SVD. If the latter has the factorization USV', then Q=UV'.