# Problem with calculating relative orientation

I am using an IMU which provides absolute orientation of the sensors frame $$S$$ relative to an earth-fixed frame $$N$$ in quaternion form, $$^S_Nq$$. In my experiments, I first obtain an initial orientation (when the sensor is relatively static) $$^I_Nq$$, and I would like to obtain the relative orientation of the sensor in the form of ZYX Euler angles (more precisely $$ZY^{'}X^{''}$$).

Here is the procedure that I have tried:
First, I invert the initial orientation,
$$^N_Iq$$ = $$^I_Nq^{-1}$$
then, I use the result the obtain the relative quaternion as follows,
$$^S_Iq$$ = $$^S_Nq$$ $$\otimes$$ $$^N_Iq$$
Finally, to visualize the results, I convert the relative orientation to Euler angles. I also have reference trajectories calculated in a motion capture software which uses the same data. However, my result looks completely different (and wrong) as seen below,
Calculated vs. reference relative orientation

Curiously, if I manually set the $$Z$$ and $$Y$$ rotations of $$^I_Nq$$ to zero (and then convert the result back to quaternion form), the angle trajectories match exactly (except for the offset of $$Z$$ and $$Y$$).
Result with setting the first two rotations of initial orientation set to zero
What am I doing wrong?

By the way, this is the MATLAB code that I'm using. Note that initQ is $$^I_Nq$$ and relQ is $$^S_Iq$$.

% Average quaternion using meanrot to obtain initial orientation.
[q(1), q(2), q(3), q(4)] = parts(meanrot(quaternion(initData));
initQ = q;

% The second method, if I manually set the first two rotations to zero.
% initEul = quat2eul(q,'ZYX');
% initEul(2) = 0;
% initEul(1) = 0;
% initQ = eul2quat(initEul,'ZYX');

relQ = quatmultiply(mocapData,quatinv(initQ));
eulerAngles = quat2eul(quaternion(relQ),'ZYX')*180/pi;

• I believe you reversed the quaternion multiplication. So instead of ${}^S_Iq = {}^S_Nq \otimes {}^N_Iq$ you should use ${}^S_Iq = {}^N_Iq \otimes {}^S_Nq$. – fibonatic Jan 3 at 12:09
• I don't think so. For reference, see Eq. 5 in the paper "INS algorithm using quaternion model for low cost IMU". – m278 Jan 3 at 19:48