IMU issues when manually moving sensor rig

[david.hall2]

When I have a toy scenario containing nothing but a rigid body cube mesh with an IMU sensor inside, I am able to move the cube via the axes as shown in the attached MP4 and have the IMU report back all the IMU readings without any issue (linear acceleration printed in top-left corner).

However, I am seemingly unable to do this with a more complicated sensor rig imported via URDF. When I move it with the axes I am unable to see any readings aside from gravity. I can get accurate looking IMU readings by dragging the sensor rig using SHIFT+LEFT_CLICK but I am wanting more accurate movement (particularly in rotation) to validate some of my experiments.

Any advice on what might be going wrong?
Structure of sensor rig is as follows

[stevfeng]

Hey! Thank you for reaching out, can you provide an usd that we can use to reproduce and investigate this problem please? Thanks!

[david.hall2]

I think I have recently solved it, or at least partially.

With the structure seen above I had been moving the sensor Xform to move the whole unit rather than any Xform with a rigid body and physics attached to it. When I move the base_link frame, IMU measurements are given.

My current assumption is that former shifts the object within the simulation but without actually applying any physics to the sensor rig whereas the latter actually moves a rigid body and hence uses physics to perform the action. Does that sound at all likely?