A new company is currently beta-testing a software platform that can scan a body shop’s estimate and automatically generate a list of advanced driver-assistance systems calibrations that need to be performed on the vehicle.
The platform, adasThink, officially launches next month, according to its president and founder, Nick Dominato, but is available now for interested shops.
Dominato, who started in the collision repair industry working in sales and marketing for asTech, says he noticed that shops weren’t carrying out nearly as many ADAS calibrations as they should have been in order to ensure complete repairs.
“These calibrations are so often required [by the OEM] but they’re not happening,” he says. “It’s hard for these body shops to find these calibrations.”
Often, such missed calibrations, says Dominato, happen due to habit and a lack of information. For example, when replacing the front bumper on a 2018 Corolla following a light frontend hit, he says, Toyota requires calibration of the front radar sensor along with the bumper replacement.
He says that calibrations can be overlooked because shops have done thousands of bumper jobs, and because its requirement and others like it can be buried in OE remove/install procedures, or within the vehicle’s calibration procedures.
“The industry needs to have a change in philosophy,” Dominato says. “We’re used to repairing cars with the steel and the plastic and the body, and now these ADAS systems are an important part of the car.”
To that end, he says adasThink enables shops to carry out proper repairs when there’s a complete lack of information around how often calibrations are required. The platform also provides documentation of needed calibrations, which is key, he says, when dealing with insurance companies, as well as simply keeping a record of how the vehicle was repaired.
“It’s my personal belief that if you don’t have documentation that a repair was done,” says Dominato, “it wasn’t done.”
As of Oct. 16, he says, more than 100 shops were beta-testing adasThink. He says there’s no cap on the number of shops that can test the platform before its Nov. 10 launch. Shops have an initial limit of 25 estimates that they may upload, though Dominato says that cap is flexible.
“ADAS is a new field, there’s not a lot of information and there’s not a lot of understanding,” he says. “If there was, my product wouldn’t exist.”
Click here to beta-test adasThink in your shop.
