Mitchell’s smart glasses give hands-free assistance to collision repairers and estimators

Patrick Rizkallah, operations manager of Craftsman Collision Group, with more than 40 locations in Western Canada, uses the Mitchell XR smart glasses to help speed up repair planning. Several repair facilities are assisting Mitchell with its proof-of-concept testing.

Jack Rozint, vice president of sales and service for Mitchell International, said the company predicts a number of uses for the glasses, which are powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR software platform. Mitchell is an inaugural member of the Qualcomm XR Enterprise Program, in which the tech company invites innovation with XR technology to take advantage of an expansion of blazing-fast 5G speeds. 

“You have the ability to review repair procedures while your hands are free and you’re either working on a teardown and developing a repair plan or you’re actually in the process of repairing the vehicle,” he said. “They work really well for that, because once you’ve got your voice commands down, you can zoom in, page down, close the repair procedure and open a different one, all through voice commands, all with your hands free, and be able to simultaneously work on the vehicle while you’re getting the additional information, as needed.”

The second use is in allowing a remote expert to be able to see what the technician sees, in real time, to offer assistance through a two-way voice conversation. While they’re collaborating on the repair, the expert can also display technical documents or a photo on the screen in the technician’s glasses.

“If you think about the collision industry, that could take a number of different iterations,” he said.

One could be for a large MSO, in which a technician at one of the locations is an expert on a particular brand or is particularly skilled at aluminum repairs. Another possibility is a remote expert from an OEM-certified repair program or an equipment manufacturer – consider the possibility of a technician needing assistance in getting welder settings adjusted, for example.

“We’re looking at how to enable that through partnerships,” Rozint said, drawing parallels to how Mitchell has an agreement with Drew Technologies to provide remote technical diagnostic assistance throughout the country for Mitchell Diagnostics.

“Because whether it’s OEMs, I-CAR, welding equipment companies, or frame machine companies, just think about the complexity of the vehicles today and how many different configurations are rolling into a collision facility and how complicated they are to repair. It seems to me that there is going to be multiple sources of remote technical assistance needed in order for collision repairers to be able to handle all of that.”

Rozint said the glasses exemplify two of Mitchell’s “core value pillars.”

“One is we believe in partnering well,” he said. “We don’t believe we can be everything that everybody might need, in terms of information in today’s collision or auto claims world. So we look at what we do and who are the best-in-class other providers in the industry that we can partner with in order to make our systems work well together and deliver solutions that help our customers.”

The other core value pillar is what the company considers its “true north,” he said.

“Three years ago, we looked at where the industry was, where Mitchell was, and where things were going, and we decided our true north was a proper and safe repair. As the vehicle technology continued to grow, delivering a proper and safe repair was going to be the most difficult challenge for the industry to solve. And when we say, ‘industry,’ we mean that goes for insurance adjusters, independent adjusters, repairers, and everybody else in the ecosystem.”

Time studies show sped-up procedures
Used as part of the check-in procedure by an estimator, the glasses can increase speed and impress the customer.

“The glasses work beautifully for that, because you can go out and have the conversation with the customer as you walk around the vehicle and capture all those pictures you need,” Rozint said.

Voice commands for a VIN scan and decoding, photographing the license plate, odometer reading, and related and unrelated damage have shown to help cut the typical check-in process time from about 20 to 22 minutes to only eight minutes, he said.

“And it does wonders for the consumer who’s dropping off their vehicle. It really gives them the feeling that, ‘Wow, I’m leaving my vehicle with an organization that’s using state-of-the-art technology.’ And that goes a long way toward establishing that customer feeling of confidence in the repair facility.”

Release date not set; glasses may be sign of the future
As of this writing, the Smart Glasses are in testing, and although a release date has not been set, it is hoped to be sometime in 2020, Rozint said. “We’ve gotten amazingly positive feedback in our proof-of-concept testing, our conference, and from people who’ve seen our news release about it. So I think the timing is right for the industry. We’re just looking at which use cases we’re going to implement first, and then we’ve got to get those scheduled into our development testing schedule.”

The design of the glasses/headwear has not yet been finalized. Mitchell is working with multiple manufacturers on its proof-of-concept as it gathers feedback from testers. The final design will provide room to wear safety glasses with it.

Rozint noted that at the mPower conference hosted by Mitchell in early October, a speaker from Qualcomm predicted that smart glasses or goggles could eventually replace smartphones in our daily lives, with the ability to browse the Web and do other computing functions, and make phone calls while conveniently leaving hands free.

“With the advantages of many applications of augmented reality and virtual reality, versus looking back and forth between the real world and your phone, there are quite a few use cases where it’s much more convenient and even fun to do it on goggles or glasses. So that’s kind of an interesting way to think about this. It’s not just necessarily collision repair applications, but this may be something we're all using.”