Increasing Speed and Accuracy of an Aircraft LCD Panel Test System​

  • Industry Served: Aerospace
  • Technology: LabVIEW / TestStand / Automated Testing
  • Products & Services: Automated Testing, Test Optimization, Data Collection Compliance
  • Customer Profile: The company creates lighted cockpit controls and glass cockpit screens for the military and commercial aircraft industry.
  • Business Challenge: The company was producing glass cockpit displays and needed to speed up testing and make testing possible with less operator expertise.
  • Solution: S5 engineers worked with the company to optimize and automate the testing process. Building on top of an existing mechanical system, we added automated measurements controlled entirely by software.
  • Benefits: 
    • Test time cut almost in half
    • ​Automated repeatable tests without expert operator
    • Traceable FAA compliance data capture

The Challenge

The customer had an existing test system that required an expert operator to perform tests on LCD panels. They desired to have a system that automated more of the test, requiring less expertise from the operator, and making tests more objective.

The Solution

Building on the existing mechanical system, S5 Solutions created software and hardware to drive increased automation. The system is able to automatically perform a wide range of visual measurements: Luminance,  Chrominance, Contrast Ratio, Positional Color / Luminance Accuracy, Color Accuracy over Multiple Viewing Envelopes.

The operator loads the device and starts the test. The rest of the process is completely automated, requiring no user interaction. These enhancements greatly improved the test. The test time was reduced from 24 minutes to 15 minutes, while test coverage was increased.

​The design uses Virginia Panel mass interconnects to support multiple fixtures to test several different product variations.

We created the ability for the system to perform self-diagnostics with a Wrap-Around-Test (WAT). This makes it possible to easily and more reliably verify the system without the use of a golden unit.

The Results

The automation system removes the need for user interaction, increasing accuracy and repeatability. It allows the test to be run by a technician instead of an optical engineer. The test time was reduced from 24 minutes to 15 minutes. Parametric data is recorded electronically for full traceability for each unit produced, providing FAA compliance.

Technical Details

  • National Instrument PXI chassis
  • Virginia Panel mass interconnects
  • Custom PCB assemblies made the cabling simpler and more reliable
  • National Instruments TestStand and LabVIEW were used for the automation programming