A family of numerical time integrators that exactly preserve the constraint
of quaternion equations is developed, The constraint-preserving integrator
s based on the property of the skew-symmetric matrix and the proposed prove
n theorems are used to improve the accuracy of updating Euler parameters. T
he stability and accuracy analysis of the generalized constraint-preserving
integrators is also discussed. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the propos
ed integrators are A-stable integrators that are proven to be useful in cal
culating angular orientations of kinematic and dynamic systems. A numerical
example is used to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed integrators
.