Open Architecture Tools to Describe Automatic Test Equipment (ATE) Capabilities

The automated test equipment (ATE) family provides state-of-art testing capabilities for weapons replaceable assemblies across the DoD. However, each ATEs testing capabilities are defined in a proprietary way. The absence of an open and standardized representation limits tool interoperability, makes it more difficult to use COTS automated tools, and can cause confusion in test station instrumentation. The Automated Test System (ATS) Framework Integrated Product Team identified the Automatic Test Markup Language (ATML), an IEEE standard, as a viable language to describe the capabilities of ATSs and test instruments.TSC proposes developing open architecture ATML Toolkit software that can describe ATE capabilities, catalog test instrument features, and display/report information in a human readable format. The tool will store ATE capabilities in a reconfigurable database determined by the ATE family and its test instruments. From the database, the tool will generate a file adhering to the IEEE 1636 Test Results schema and display its output to a graphical user interface. The tool will be capable of parsing ATML files and augmenting the ATE capabilities database automatically. To aid in adopting ATML standards, TSC will also create a free open-source software tool for creating common signal models and ATML Test Instrument Description files.