I wouldn't class the sort of thing Ovid was talking about as ATPG. You're not generating the tests - you're writing them yourself. With ATPG you're creating test patterns algorithmically.

In fact I've not come across the term ATPG outside the hardware world (something I'm only vaguely familiar with because my younger, smarter, better looking brother is an EE :-).

As I understand it you use various algorithms to generate patterns of voltages to find potential faults in your circuit. There are big commercial systems for doing this like TetraMAX and FastScan, but people do write their own - in Perl and other languages.

For example if you search for Perl in this document you'll find some people using Perl to generate code for MacroTest (an optional part of FastScan).

There's a hell of lot of research in the area because hardware test cycles can burn up a hell of a lot of development time. However I don't know hardware so I can't offer any pointers.