Trends in Inertial Sensors and Applications

Inertial sensors have now become quite ubiquitous as many devices and systems rely on them to serve a broad variety of applications. Where inertial sensors were once characterized as expensive precision instruments today lower performance inertial sensors are manufactured by the billions of units per year at a cost of a few cents per sensor while higher performance gyros and accelerometers have achieved unprecedented performance and reliability at much reduced prices. This proliferation of inertial sensing has been driven by, and has enabled, advances in sensor technology as well as an interesting diversity of applications. In this paper some observations of the historical trends in inertial sensing and devices will be provided. The significant applications that have stimulated and supported inertial sensor development and manufacturing will also be presented. Extrapolation of these trends into the future will be attempted as a group of promising future inertial sensor technologies and potentially new applications is discussed.