Supersensitive Accelerometer Could Be the Answer to Better Drone Control

You've probably got at least one on your person right now. They're built to fit into smartwatches and smaller things, and that small size hampers how well they can sense changes. Engineers in Florida have now come up with a new take on the accelerometer that is as much as 1 million times as sensitive as a typical smartphone accelerometer, and it maintains that sensitivity up to a car-crash-scale 100 gs. That combination of high sensitivity and large dynamic range in a cube that's just 3 millimeters on a side should make the new accelerometer particularly useful in things that move quickly in three-dimensions, such as military drones, microrobots, and self-guided projectiles, according its inventors. Ordinary MEMS accelerometers are made up of a moveable plate and a stationary plate, oriented perpendicular to each dimension measured.