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.

Many of the gadgets in the first generation of wearables are designed to improve the health of its wearer, featuring a simple accelerometer like the one on your phone to track movement. Many also ...

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 ...