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The World's Tiniest Optical Gyroscope is Now Smaller Than a Grain of Rice
[Microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS)] are limited in their sensitivity, so engineers have also developed superior optical gyroscopes that perform with better accuracy and with the omission of moving parts. To do this these devices rely on a phenomenon referred to as the Sagnac effect.
Named after French physicist Georges Sagnac, this optical effect rooted in Einstein's theory of general relativity works by seeing the optical gyroscope split a beam of light into two and then rotate to manipulate the arrival of the now separate beams at its detector.
[...] Although very useful, so far even the best high-performance optical gyroscopes have been bigger than a golf ball and therefore incompatible with most of today's portable electronics. Previous attempts to build smaller versions of these high-precision devices, unfortunately, have always resulted in a reduced Sagnac effect signal and therefore reduced reliability and accuracy.
Now, a team of Caltech engineers led by Ali Hajimiri, Bren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, have found a way to shrink these devices while at the same time improving their accuracy. The discovery is bound to forever change the use of optical gyroscopes, likely making them even more popular and ever-present than MEMS. Caltech's novel optical gyroscope is 500 times smaller than the best devices currently available, making it smaller than a grain of rice, yet it can detect phase shifts 30 times smaller than even the most precise models out there. To do this, the tiny device uses something called "reciprocal sensitivity enhancement."
Also at Caltech.
Nanophotonic optical gyroscope with reciprocal sensitivity enhancement (DOI: 10.1038/s41566-018-0266-5) (DX) (correction)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by esperto123 on Tuesday October 30 2018, @06:48PM (2 children)
In my work I use fiber optic based gyros for heading measurement, these gyros are awesome, very compact and much better to maintain than the mechanical one, the "only" problem is that they cost about 3 times as much.
I assume that the 30 times more precise is compared to the previous miniature optic gyros, not the full size ones, but I could not find the actual figures. If the accuracy is on par with the full size ones, this thing will change inertial navigation field forever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30 2018, @07:12PM
From the abstract: "The proof-of-concept device is capable of detecting phase shifts 30 times smaller than state-of-the-art miniature fibre-optic gyroscopes, despite being 500 times smaller in size" - yes, compared to minis not to navy balloons. Their techniques solve issues that larger units don't have, I think. (I can only get the abstract from here.)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30 2018, @08:24PM
Testing my memory, weren't the first optical angular rate sensors called "ring laser gyros"? They were, iirc, briefcase sized and many thousands of $$$. Used to measure continental drift...?