A hemispherical resonator gyroscope (HRG) has been implemented by using a consumer wineglass as the resonator and 3 × 3 optical interferometers as the detectors. The poorness of the off-the-shelf wineglass as the resonator can be overcome by the high performance of the optical interferometer. The effects of asymmetries in stiffness and absorption of the resonator are analyzed theoretically and confirmed experimentally. We prove that the trace of the amplitude ratio of two n = 2 fundamental resonant modes of the resonator follows a straight line in a complex plane. By utilizing the straightness of the ratio and the high performance of the optical interferometer, we extract four real constant parameters characterizing the HRG system. Experimentally, by using a resonator having an average resonance frequency of 444 Hz and Q value of 1477.2, it was possible to measure the Coriolis force at the level of industrial grade. The bias stability was measured as small as 2.093°/h.
Keywords: 3 × 3 optical interferometer; asymmetric hemispherical resonator; hemispherical resonator gyroscope; precision vibration measurement.