OMRON has expanded its collaboration with NVIDIA to bring advanced AI and simulation capabilities into semiconductor inspection, integrating its inspection systems with NVIDIA Omniverse to enable more intelligent, automated, and predictive quality control.
At the center of this effort is the combination of OMRON’s Automated Optical Inspection (AOI) and 3D-CT X-ray Inspection (AXI) technologies with NVIDIA’s digital twin and AI frameworks. The integration is designed to tackle growing challenges in semiconductor inspection and electronics manufacturing, where increasing PCB complexity and a global shortage of skilled technicians are putting pressure on yield and quality.
OMRON and NVIDIA collaboration, which began in 2022, now extends into a broader convergence of operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT), allowing previously siloed manufacturing data to be unified. This creates new insights that can improve productivity, optimize processes, and enhance yield performance.
One of the key advancements is the ability to visualize “board warpage”, a common issue caused by heat during manufacturing that can lead to solder defects but is often difficult to detect. Using physics-based simulations within Omniverse, OMRON can now recreate and visualize subtle board deformations in real time.
This allows manufacturers to fine-tune thermal profiles during heating and cooling processes, helping prevent defects before they occur.
The integration also enhances defect analysis by combining surface-level AOI data with internal AXI imaging. Through digital twin technology, engineers can overlay these datasets to identify hidden causal relationships such as internal voids causing component misalignment providing a more complete understanding of manufacturing issues.
To further address the shortage of skilled labor, OMRON is introducing AI-driven inspection agents powered by NVIDIA Metropolis Blueprint for Video Search and Summarization (VSS) and NVIDIA Cosmos. These agents use vision-language models and large language models to analyze images and historical data, enabling them to answer complex queries and recommend corrective actions.
For example, when asked about the cause of board warpage, the system can identify similar past cases, analyze root causes, and provide clear, actionable insights—effectively capturing and scaling expert knowledge across the factory floor.
The initiative aligns with OMRON’s mid-term “SF 2nd Stage” roadmap starting in fiscal 2026, where its Inspection Systems Business has been identified as a key growth driver. By combining its automation expertise with NVIDIA’s physical AI technologies, the company aims to deliver next-generation inspection solutions that support increasingly digitalized and autonomous manufacturing environments.
As semiconductor production grows more complex, the partnership underscores a broader industry shift toward AI-driven, simulation-enabled semiconductor inspection systems designed to improve quality, efficiency, and scalability.
Leadership Comment
“Leveraging OMRON’s know-how in automation rooted in a real on-site perspective, together with high-speed, high-precision control technology, we will realize highly accurate digital twins as part of the solution. By combining our inspection data with NVIDIA’s physical AI, customers will be able to visualize the factors affecting production, rapidly upskill novice operators, and maximize the ROI (return on investment) of production lines.” said Motohiro Yamanishi, Company President of the Industrial Automation Company (IAB), OMRON
To Know More: CLICK HERE
