Future ot Test Development

Since I am a test developer I think a lot about how to make my own job easier. I believe National Instruments is on the right track in the future of test software with LabVIEW. Graphical is very much the way to go, especially for the Hardware guy forced to write software tests. It still has room for improvements especially with the amount of mousing that it requires. I have mild Carpel Tunnel Syndrome but when I use LabVIEW, it flares up and I have pain in my wrist. LabVIEW also easy to leave out a lot of the discipline really needed for software, things like clean code, readability, and documentation. But LabVIEW is still the way.

In the farther future, I believe that the development of hardware and software will be more coupled and much more automated. NI, again, is doing well on this. With NI-Scope, NI-DMM, and NI-Switch. When you get an NI-DMM card, any DMM card, and use NI-DMM to deal with it. All that really needs to be known is the basics of what DMM measurements need to be made. It's all drop in from there.

The more distance test development future should bring more automated and integrated development. I believe the Test Engineer will specify what signals, tolerances, and communications channels needed to be tested for each of the UUTs that are to be tested. A test development (TD) tool will select the best instruments for the job and layout the Interconnect panel (ICP) (The ICP is where all signals from all the instruments come out to the outside world) The Test Engineer would verify the instruments are right.

The TD tool would use the signal to be tested and instrument it chose to create an Integration Test Adapter (ITA) to self test the station. (ITA take the signal from the Instrument through the ICA and routes it to cables, switch cards, and other instruments). The wire lists for the ITA fabrication would come from the tool. From the ITA and wire lists the software for a test set self test would be generated.

Then the tool will take Save Nowthat ICA output and the UUT signal specs that we started with and would develop the ITA and wire list for each UUT test. Using the UUT wire lists and ITA a UUT self tests software and UUT test software would be generated.

The switch cards needed to route the signals for the Station Selftest and UUT tests would be added to the design.

Below is a simple flow I threw together.

This whole thing is conjecture on my part and very over simplified but, in general, seems doable. Overall, eventually, there will most likely be a lot more automation of layout and test.