Posted to News on 17th Jul 2026, 10:00
OMRON advances inspection technology with NVIDIA Omniverse and Metropolis
OMRON has an expansion of its integration of NVIDIA technologies by combining OMRON's Automated Optical Inspection (AOI) and 3D-CT X-ray Inspection (AXI) with NVIDIA Omniverse libraries. Specifically, this will make it possible to visualise substrate warpage caused by heat and to implement AI-driven "skillless" inspection, aiming to revolutionise the semiconductor inspection process.
Recently, as digital society has advanced, including the rise of AI factories, the innovation of various electronic devices, such as ultra-high-speed, high-capacity information processing, has accelerated. As a result, the mounting of printed circuit boards (PCBs), which support these devices, has become more complex, and advanced mounting technology and strict quality assurance are required.
In manufacturing sites as well, the shortage of skilled technicians is becoming increasingly severe worldwide. Semiconductor manufacturers experience challenges related to substrate yields and quality control as a result of these shortages, making it urgent to shift to AI-driven quality control that can help scale individual expertise and know-how.
The technical integration of OMRON and NVIDIA AI and simulation technologies began in 2022. In this further collaboration, as part of an expanded, OT and IT are linked to integrate manufacturing data that had previously been siloed, providing new insights (potential information) that lead to improved productivity, quality, and yields. Furthermore, OMRON will expand the application area of digital twins to PCB (printed circuit board/advanced semiconductors) inspection processes that require micron-level precision, promoting real-time optimization on the manufacturing floor. OMRON is engaged in the following three initiatives that leverage physical AI and simulation technologies.
1. Visualising board warpage through reproduction in digital space
"Board warpage," which occurs when heat is applied during the manufacturing process, is one of the key challenges in electronic component manufacturing; while it can lead to solder joint defects and quality abnormalities in components, it is difficult to recognize with the naked eye. In this collaboration, we will reproduce and visualise "board warpage" with high precision in digital space.
By integrating NVIDIA Omniverse libraries, OMRON can use physics-based simulation to reproduce board deformation and the force resisting deformation, enabling real-time visualization of subtle changes that were previously difficult to grasp. With these simulations, manufacturing sites can pre-adjust the time-based temperature changes (thermal profile) in the heating and cooling process, making it possible to predict and prevent critical solder joint defects before they occur.
2. Investigating hidden causal relationships through the spatial overlay of AOI and AXI
OMRON uses digital twins to overlay the 3D surface data acquired by AOI (automated optical inspection) with the data on internal structures acquired by AXI (3D-CT X-ray inspection). This enables engineers to instantly identify the causal relationships behind phenomena occurring on the surface - such as pinpointing tiny internal bubbles that caused misalignment of surface components - and to make visible information that had previously been unseen, dramatically enhancing the essential value provided by inspection equipment.
3. AI Agent Assisted Inspection
To address the global challenge of a shortage of skilled engineers and make inspections more AI-driven OMRON will introduce visual inspection agents powered by NVIDIA Metropolis Blueprint for Video Search and Summarization (VSS) and NVIDIA Cosmos. VSS uses Cosmos Reason, an open vision language model (VLM) to analyse images, together with a LLM to understand historical data, enabling the agent to reason and propose next steps to users.
For example, when a user asks, "Why is this board warped?", the AI agent searches historical data for images of warped boards with similar characteristics, analyses the root cause, and returns a detailed answer with insights to the user in an easy-to-understand summary.
"Leveraging OMRON's know-how in automation rooted in a real on-site perspective, together with high-speed, high-precision control technology, we will realise highly accurate digital twins as part of the solution. By combining our inspection data with NVIDIA's physical AI, customers will be able to visualise the factors affecting production, rapidly upskill novice operators, and maximise the ROI (return on investment) of production lines." said Motohiro Yamanishi, Company President of the Industrial Automation Company (IAB), OMRON Corporation.
