An accelerometer is the ubiquitous little sensor that tells your tablet when to flip orientation or informs the brain of your quadcopter how closely its actual actions are matching your desired ones.

An optomechanical accelerometer that uses light to measure acceleration. Credit: F Zhou/NIST An accelerometer that uses laser light instead of just mechanical strain can register changes as small as ...

Researchers at the National Institute of Technology (NIST) have developed a new type of accelerometer based on lasers and optomechanical principles rather than the traditional mechanical strain gauges ...