Use of vehicular electronic stability controls is growing. A new quartz MEMS gyroscope can handle the harsh under-hood environment, where temperatures exceed 125°C and shock and vibration are significant.

High accuracy at a low cost over a wide temperature range makes thermal MEMS accelerometers the hot choice in tilt sensing. Find out whether they're right for your application.

The development of "active," noncontact sensors based on Hall effect, magnetoresistive, and variable-reluctance transformer technologies is penetrating the established market of "passive," contact sensors—and increasingly taking market share for automotive speed and position applications, says market research firm Strategy Analytics. "This is being driven by the need for improved reliability as well as increased functionality and accuracy," notes senior analyst Simon Schofield.

Automotive Propels Consumer Sensors May 1, 2006 By: Virgil LaBuda and Michelle A. Kelsey, Freescale Semiconductor Inc., Michelle A. Kelsey, Freescale Semiconductor Inc.

The silicon micromachined inertial sensor that deploys your automotive airbags can't simply be dropped into your laptop for free-fall detection without some do-differentlys. The differences go well beyond the application spaces of medium/high-g and low-g that automotive sockets sport. In fact, the automotive and consumer markets present conflicting fundamental demands. Building a bridge between them means giving reconsideration to design, test, space, quality, time-to-market, front- and back-end assembly—and price.

What's 1650 m long, has a 114 m vertical drop, and supports an object that can reach a max. speed of 130 km/hr.? The answer is the bobsled run at San Sicario near Torino, Italy. The run, a concrete and steel structure, is covered with snow and then soaked with water. The bobsled, luge, and skeleton competitors slide on the resulting ice, powered only by gravity and their initial push-off at the start.

Read this and you will learn how quartz accelerometers work and how to power and instrument them.

A good example of unwanted vibratory motion is a washing machine in its spin cycle trying to walk out of the room. MR damping can correct this and other problem vibrations.

Analog engineers will appreciate the piezoelectric accelerometer design that provides control over the signal conditioning portion of the measurement. Other engineers will opt for the "digital" method that allows surface micromachined capacitive accelerometers to practically design themselves.

This tutorial addresses the physics of vibration; dynamics of a spring mass system; damping; displacement, velocity, and acceleration; and the operating principles of the sensors that detect and measure these properties.