The aim is to build a portable technology demonstrator by April 2021, that is twice as sensitive as the industry standard (falling mass) technique and, importantly because the aims is for this to lead to a commercial product, 10x faster in operation. “Now it takes a few days to measure across a football field, we want to get that down to less than a day,” Cliff Weatherup, strategic technology manager of Teledyne e2v told Electronics Weekly – the company will integrate the components in the final instrument.

The technique still senses the movement of a mass, but in this case it is a cloud of ultra-cold atoms, likely to be rubidium, propelled upward in a vacuum, then falling back under gravity. (See How it works below)