Development of a novel visual servoing probe test method for fault diagnosis of printed circuit boards
Printed circuit board (PCB) measurement and repair is a challenging task that requires experience and expertise to perform. PCB diagnosis and repair shops employ skilled operators to carry out the corresponding measurement tasks using measuring instruments (e.g., oscilloscopes, multimeters) in order to uncover the condition of a particular product. However, these tasks are often repetitive and meticulous, and additionally, the results need to be collected and carefully documented so that the gathered experience regarding the product can be re-used when the next product of the same type arrives into the shop. Nevertheless, the diagnosis of used PCBs is less researched and current flexible automation possibilities are limited. In this paper, a novel visual servoing probe test method and measurement tool are proposed to provide a flexible solution for PCB diagnosis with a higher level of automation. The aim of the approach is to reduce the burden on the operators by carrying out the repetitive measurement tasks and automatically storing the results while leaving the responsibility of measurement profile setup to the human expert. The proposed visual servo system uses manually teached-in measurement points, where template patterns are recorded using cameras, and it is capable of compensating positioning errors in the range of a couple of millimeters. The proof of concept of the proposed method is presented through motherboard measuring experiments, with a 99.7% success rate.