HP reveals highly sensitive accelerometer

Helett Packard has revealed a new accelerometer based on a novel design claiming it can sensure motions far more sensitively than competitors devices. The sensor can measure down to 100 nano-g per root Hertz and is based on a capacitive sensing principle.

In standard sensors using capacitve sensing, the distance between the electrodes of a capacitor is changed thereby changing the capacitance. In this design two arrays of small electrodes seperated by a fixed gap are used. External acceleration changes the overlap of the electrodes, hence changing the capacitance.

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Fujitsu Siemens chooses STMicro sensors for free fall detection

Fujitsu Siemens will use STMicroelectronics' free-fall detection solution consisting of a 3-axis motion sensor and software to protect it's new Esprimo Mobile family of professional notebooks.
When the sensor detects a possible free-fall event of the notebook, it automatically prompts the system to move the magnetic read/write head of the hard0disk drive to a safe position before hitting the ground thereby maintaining data integrity.

IMU developed by students at MIT

It seems that one of the first proper Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) has been developed by two MIT students to allow for dead-reckoning in case when a GPS signal is not available.
By using a combination of an accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer apparently they can achieve a positional accuracy of 1m with and 3m without GPS signal present.
We are quite likely to see more and more applications of this kind of application in the near future for such applications as: consumer electronics, automotive, aerospace etc.