Micromachined gyroscopes: Challenges, design solutions, and opportunities

Micromachined gyroscopes are probably the most challenging type of transducers ever attempted to be designed in micro-world. A nail-size dynamic system integrated with control electronics on the same silicon chip (Fig. 1(a)) is designed to be a very sensitive sensor which is potentially able to detect maneuvers and motions beyond human perception. Along with exciting opportunities which MEMS gyroscopes could bring to everyday life, the miniaturization introduces many new technical challenges. Multi-degree of freedom dynamics, sensitivity to fabrication imperfections, dynamic instability, limited control resources - all these raise a number of fundamentally challenging issues in the design, analysis, and control of micromachined gyroscopes. In this paper, we summarize principles of operation, review, recent research and development efforts, and discuss potential applications and the future market of silicon based micromachined gyroscopes.