A system to automatically generate test program sets

This paper describes a novel technique for creating the test program sets (TPSs) that are used by automatic test equipment (ATE) to test electronic circuits and devices. This paper presents an architecture consisting of a genetic algorithm (GA) test proposer and a pattern classifier test evaluator. This architecture has been shown to produce optimized test sequences without human intervention. In contrast to the above, the current method of developing TPSs and test sequences is an analytical process involving the building of fault trees using circuit diagrams of the unit under test and industrial-strength circuit simulation models. Since TPS software currently is coded manually, it can cost millions of dollars and take 12 months to 18 months of lead time to produce. In the prototype system, both the GA and the test evaluator are used to optimize input stimuli, significantly reducing the labor hours of a human TPS developer. The outputs of the process are a stimulus signals specification and a diagnostics reasoning system that could be deployed to ATE. The system has been demonstrated on a small scale using a band-pass filter circuit with twenty components, and in simulation on circuits with up to three hundred components. Success was shown by automatically generating a TPS that provided full fault detection and full fault isolation of the band-pass filter circuit. The next steps in the development process include demonstrating the technology on Fleet asset circuit cards, improving the scalability using high-performance computing assets, and implementing external interfaces using Automatic Test Markup Language (ATML).