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My memory goes back to my early collage studies that were almost entirely on the scale of "macroworld", as we
practiced/perceived it some four decades ago. Since that time things have changed a lot constantly decreasing the scales
of interest, at times at rather rapid pace, with monumental advances leading to the scales we work with today and plan
for tomorrow. During that change/transition there were "meso" and "micro" developments characterized by changes in
scales/sizes of things of interest. Today's scale of interest is "nano" and we are already not only working with
"picotechnology", but are even reaching beyond while constantly "planning and projecting" the scales/worlds of the
future. Advancement of any technology, especially new emerging ones as we witness/experience them today, is
facilitated by the use of all available solution strategies. One of the emerging strategies that affect almost anything
currently being developed and/or used, in the today's nanoworld, is based on recent advances of microelectromechanical
systems (MEMS). Today MEMS affect almost everything we do from household appliances, via cars we drive and
planes that whisk us from continent to continent, to spaceships used for search of/and exploration of other worlds. The
modern microsensors are also used to explore for and produce petroleum products that are used in multitude of today's
applications. To facilitate these advances a great majority of MEMS is used in the form of sensors. However
development of MEMS in general and sensors in particular poses one of the greatest challenges in today's experimental
mechanics. Among MEMS, the greatest contemporary interest is in the area of inertial sensors because they have
numerous uses ranging from everyday applications to highly specialized ones, including many industrial platforms. As
such they have tremendous potential to affect future of humanity. However, advances in MEMS, such as pressure and
temperature sensors as well as gyroscopes and accelerometers, require the use of computational modeling and simulation
coupled/combined with physical measurements. This author believes that successful combination of computer aided
design (CAD) and multiphysics as well as multiscale simulation tools with the state-of-the-art (SOTA) measurement
methodology will contribute to reduction of high prototyping costs, long product development cycles, and time-tomarket
pressures while developing new sensors with nanoscale characteristics for various applications we use now and
those that we will need in the future. In our approach we combine/hybridize a unique, fully integrated, software
environment for multiscale, multiphysics, high fidelity analysis of the contemporary sensors with the SOTA
optoelectronic laser interferometric microscope (OELIM) methodology, which is based on recent developments in
speckle. The speckle-based OELIM methodology allows remote, noninvasive, full-field-of-view (FFV) measurements
of deformations with high spatial resolution, nanometer accuracy, and in near real-time. In this paper, both, the software
environment and the OELIM methodology are described and their applications are illustrated with representative
examples demonstrating viability of the completely autonomous computer-based procedures for the development of
contemporary sensors with nanocharacteristics suitable for the advancement of new evolving technologies that will
shape our future. This process is demonstrated using devices of contemporary interest. The preliminary examples
demonstrate capability of our approach to quantitatively determine effects of static and dynamic loads on the
performance of sensors. In addition, potential economic rewards of the technology, projected into near future, will also
be discussed.
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