SBIR Phase II: FlashPCB Service Commercialization and AI Component Package Identification

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目的更广泛/商业影响是创建一个人工智能驱动的印刷电路板组装（PCBA）服务，使新产品更快地进入市场，并允许工程师通过减少pcb设计的迭代时间来开发更复杂的设计。pcb原型设计是从消费品到医疗设备的所有电子产品创新过程中的关键要素，但目前的PCBA原型设计服务受到手工步骤和供应链短缺的限制。该项目的人工智能创新将通过战略自动化节省客户时间，缩短创新时间，更快地将新产品推向市场。目前，其他国家仍然主导着PCBA市场份额，服务于许多来自美国的客户。有机会在美国提供高质量，具有成本竞争力的制造，以更好地服务市场并满足对pcb不断增长的需求。此外，对国内制造业的投资将加强电子制造能力，减少对国外市场的依赖，并保护知识产权。这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目将为客户提供快速的PCBA原型服务。该项目采用计算机视觉和人工智能技术来确保客户设计的可制造性，并找到满足客户设计的组件，同时确保设计可以在三天内制造出来。该项目将自动化许多与报价和制造PCBA相关的手动步骤。引用PCBA最耗时的步骤之一是确定一组组件，这些组件将满足客户的设计，并且可以在制造时间框架内采购。基于SBIR第一阶段项目中开发的组件选择算法（从客户的设计中读取属性文本以找到满足客户规格的组件），将构建一个将组件与足迹（电路板上的铜着陆垫，组件被焊接在其上）匹配的系统。这将允许快速报价，组件替换和可制造性检查，所有这些都将使PCBA原型快速和容易为客户。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to create an artificial intelligence-powered printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) service that allows new products to get to market faster and that allows engineers to develop more sophisticated designs by decreasing the time to iterate on PCBs designs. Prototyping PCBAs is a key element in the innovation process for all electronics from consumer goods to medical devices, but current PCBA prototyping services are limited by manual steps and supply chain shortages. The artificial intelligence innovation of this project will save the customers time through strategic automation, shortening innovation timelines, and bringing new products to market faster. Currently, other countries are still dominating the PCBA market share, serving many customers from the United States. There is an opportunity to provide high-quality, cost-competitive manufacturing in the United States to better serve the market and meet the rising demand for PCBAs. Additionally, investment in domestic manufacturing will strengthen electronic manufacturing capabilities, reduce dependence on foreign markets, and protect intellectual property.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will create a service that provides customers with a rapid PCBA prototyping service. The project employs computer vision and artificial intelligence techniques to ensure the manufacturability of customers’ designs and find components to satisfy the customers’ designs while ensuring the designs can be manufactured in a blistering three days. The project will automate many of the manual steps associated with quoting and manufacturing a PCBA. One of the most time-consuming steps of quoting a PCBA is determining a set of components that will satisfy a customer’s design and which can be sourced within the manufacturing time frame. Building on the component selection algorithm developed in the SBIR Phase I project, which reads the property text from the customer’s designs to find components that satisfy the customer’s specifications, will build a system for matching components to a footprint (the copper landing pad on the board onto which a component is soldered). This will allow for rapid quoting, component substitution, and manufacturability checks, all of which will make PCBA prototyping fast and easy for the customer.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.