After 35 years of experimental research, we are rapidly approaching the point at which gravitational waves (GWs) from astrophysical sources may be directly detected by the long-baseline detectors LIGO (USA), GEO 600 (Germany/UK), VIRGO (Italy/France) and TAMA 300 (Japan), which are now in or coming into operation.
A promising source of GWs is the coalescence of compact binary systems, events which are now believed to be the origin of short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs).
In this paper, a brief review of the state of the art in detector development and exploitation will be given, with particular relevance to a search for signals associated with GRBs, and plans for the future will be discussed.