This study presents the development of a biologically inspired vibration sensor designed for real-time measurement of absolute vibration motion, leveraging nonlinear structural characteristics that exhibit quasi-zero stiffness. Unlike conventional accelerometer-based approaches, which are prone to error accumulation and limited real-time performance, the proposed sensor offers enhanced accuracy and reliability. An adaptive compensation method is employed to estimate structural parameters, ensuring precise modeling of the sensor’s dynamic behavior. Utilizing the sensor’s capabilities, a model-based fault detection algorithm is introduced to address the challenges of identifying weak and rapidly time-varying faults—limitations commonly encountered in frequency- and wavelet-based techniques. Both theoretical analysis and experimental validation confirm the algorithm’s effectiveness and efficiency, highlighting its potential for practical deployment in advanced fault detection applications.