Automatic printed circuit board inspection: a comprehensible survey

The printed circuit board (PCB) plays a critical role in any electronic product, and its manufacturing quality assurance is responsible for substantially impacting the final product’s price. Hence, research and development (R&D) for better inspection methods have been an internationally growing subject. Regarding the multiple PCB inspection paradigms, the visual investigation of these boards represents the majority of modern techniques. Thus, the present survey collects the most impacting studies over the last 25 years, highlighting their operation strategies and how they evolved until recently, including introducing artificial intelligence (AI) approaches to increase their overall performance and lower operating costs. Furthermore, this work calls attention to the importance of public PCB datasets to contribute to developing such methods and provide benchmarking references. Finally, the most recent challenges in the field are described and discussed.