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Silicon Sensing is very proud of its heritage and its underlying MEMS technology. Read on for more technical background to confirm the unique attributes of our gyros and to assist your understanding of how they can best be used.

Introduction

Angular rate sensors, are used whenever rate of turn sensing is required without a fixed point of reference.  The speed of rotation is measured in 'inertial space' and, as such, our gyros are also part of a family of 'inertial sensors'.  This separates our gyros from any other means of measuring rotation, such as a tachometer.

Traditionally, gyros (gyroscopes) were much like the children's toy - a spinning mass supported such that its position in inertial space remains fixed and allowing rotation of its support structure to be measured.  Indeed, such gyros remain the technology of choice for a variety of applications where accuracy is paramount (and where other high-precision sensors, like ring-laser gyros, remain unaffordable).

But over the last twenty years, the world of inertial sensors has turned on its head with the emergence of 'solid state' non-rotating rate sensors, still colloquially known as gyros.  Their construction in silicon (or sometimes quartz) explains their other descriptive name of 'MEMS' (Micro machined Electro-Mechanical Systems) devices.