Researchers at King’s College London have unveiled the world’s first sensor capable of levitating about a hundred glass microparticles at once while tracking their motion with record-high precision. The study was published in Nature Communications.

From a Single Particle to an Entire Cloud

Conventional levitating sensors operate with a single microparticle isolated in a vacuum to shield it from external vibrations and thermal noise. This setup makes it possible to measure extremely small changes in acceleration, but it severely limits both the speed and scale of measurements. The London team has now solved this limitation: their electromagnetic traps can hold dozens or even hundreds of particles simultaneously, and the system monitors each particle’s position both individually and collectively.

The key breakthrough is the use of a neuromorphic camera that mimics the way the human eye works. Instead of capturing full frames, the camera records only changes in the scene, drastically reducing data volume and increasing the update rate.

Professor James Millen, director of the Centre for Quantum Research, explained that the team had created a microscopic sensor of exceptional sensitivity and said the neuromorphic, brain-inspired approach to processing visual information allows them to control particle motion at very high speeds.

From Dark Matter to GPS-Free Navigation

When the particles are cooled to the quantum regime, the sensor will be able to detect extremely weak forces — from gravitational waves to hypothetical interactions with dark-matter particles. Real-time AI algorithms analyze the behavior of each particle and of the entire cloud, suppressing noise and stabilizing the system.

Thanks to its very low power consumption, the researchers expect that within 5–10 years such multisensors could be integrated directly into microchips. This would enable applications in:

  • autonomous navigation without satellites
    • environmental monitoring
    • smart devices
    • fundamental physics

In Brief

Physicists in London have, for the first time, levitated and simultaneously tracked around a hundred microparticles using a neuromorphic camera and AI. The new sensor is already highly sensitive, and with quantum cooling it could detect signals from dark matter and gravitational waves. Within 5–10 years, the technology may migrate onto chips and find uses ranging from GPS-free navigation to consumer electronics.