High performance motion sensing is useful in many industries. In the military & aerospace areas, the use of Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) and other systems based on high-performance accelerometers & gyroscopes has been widespread for navigation, flight control and stabilization functions for decades. In the naval area, navigation through gyrocompassing is an historical application of gyro assemblies.
The rise of inertial systems used in industrial applications during the last years has been driven by the possibility of integrating new functionality at low cost and with good performance, mostly thanks to the recent developments in MEMS accelerometer and gyroscope technology. These include structural and machine health monitoring, train tilting and vibration monitoring, autonomous cars and robots, to name a few. All are benefiting and will continue to do so in the future, as the trend for less human intervention is driving innovation.
The market for accelerometers, gyroscopes, IMU, INS is still fragmented, with many applications. The high-end inertial system market is estimated to be $3.24B in 2019, dominated by defense and aerospace applications. Yole sees this market experiencing a 2.7% annual growth rate, reaching $3.80B in 2025.
The impact of covid-19 in 2020 will be significant in all markets except defense. Long-term effects are expected in commercial aerospace, which will take time to recover.