Micromachined Inertial Sensors State of the Art and a Look into the Future

In the paper a review is given of the current state of the art of micromachined inertial sensors accelerometers and gyroscopes. These sensors can be used in a wide range of applications and micromachined devices have a number of significant advantages over their conventional counterparts such as lower cost, smaller form factor and lower power consumption. An overview will be given over the diverse technical implementations which can be classified by the manufacturing process, the type of transduction mechanism, and the type of control system. While micromachined accelerometers are already commercially available from a range of companies, gyroscopes are subject to intensive research worldwide and a series of problems remains to be resolved. A novel approach to inertial sensing, currently under investigation at Southampton University, is introduced which relies on electrostatic levitation and has the potential to overcome some inherent drawbacks of prevailing concepts.