In
mathematics, a
unit vector in a
normed vector space is a
vector (often a
spatial vector) of
length 1. A unit vector is often denoted by a lowercase letter with a "hat":
(pronounced "i-hat"). The term
direction vector is used to describe a unit vector being used to represent spatial direction, and such quantities are commonly denoted as
d. Two 2D direction vectors,
d1 and
d2 are illustrated. 2D spatial directions represented this way are equivalent numerically to points on the
unit circle.