Mechanical gyroscopes and gyrometers with rotating element

Generally speaking, a gyroscope is any device that measures the rotation of its housing relative to absolute space. On the other hand, a gyrometer is any device that measures one (or two) components of the instantaneous absolute rotation of its housing.

At present, these devices involve various physical phenomena:

• the inertia of the material: these are mechanical sensors, which always feature an element that can be moved in relation to its housing: this element can be either rotating (as in this article), or vibrating (as in the article "Vibrating mechanical gyroscopes").

• light propagation: these are optical sensors (laser gyrometers, fiber optic gyrometers), the subject of the "Optical gyrometers" article.