Changing the automatic test paradigm through concurrent measurement and test development

Industry has traditionally provided automatic test equipment (ATE) and test program sets (TPSs) that are based upon sequential signal measurements followed by an evaluation. This common approach raises two issues, fault isolation accuracy and runtime. In early 2002 SEI was awarded a contract to develop the next generation contact test set to be used in testing the LAV-25 turret assemblies. This program required rapid development of a test station and TPSs that provided highly reliable fault detection and isolation and short runtimes. To achieve this, SEI developed a unique test system, which used commercial off the shelf hardware, that supported capturing signals concurrently. In addition, a new declarative test language, which relied heavily on templates and pull-down options, was defined. This declarative language approach provided the rapid application development needed to meet the development and integration schedule.