If I understood this correctly, would this allow you to make an extremely good estimation of direction of velocity? If you want to use dead reckoning to estimate position, how would you know the abs of the velocity?
I'm way out of my depth here but I believe this would function as a very sensitive accelerometer. The rubidium would be still relative to the lasers so when you accelerated, it would have inertia and take some time to catch up with the rest of the device. You'd then integrate the acceleration to find the velocity and integrate that to find position.
Yeah, it is an extremely sensitive accelerometer which it calls out about halfway through the article.
"At the heart of the quantum compass – which could be ready for widespread use in a few years – is a device known as an accelerometer that can measure how an object’s velocity changes over time."
