  We study theoretically the interaction between the charge dynamics of a
few-electron double quantum dot and a capacitively-coupled AFM cantilever, a
setup realized in several recent experiments. We demonstrate that the
dot-induced frequency shift and damping of the cantilever can be used as a
sensitive probe of coherent inter-dot tunnelling, and that these effects can be
used to quantitatively extract both the magnitude of the coherent interdot
tunneling and (in some cases) the value of the double-dot T_1 time. We also
show how the adiabatic modulation of the double-dot eigenstates by the
cantilever motion leads to new effects compared to the single-dot case.
