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Porsche Outfitting Dealer Technicians with Augmented-Reality Glasses

Photo credit: The Manufacturer - Car and Driver
Photo credit: The Manufacturer - Car and Driver

From Car and Driver

Porsche has announced that it’s giving technicians at its U.S. dealership service departments new augmented-reality glasses that should help make repairs more efficient. Called Tech Live Look, the system outfits the technicians with computerized glasses that use software to project step-by-step bulletins and schematic drawings across the line of vision. All the while, remote experts who might be hundreds of miles away can see what the technician is seeing and provide real-time feedback, Porsche said. Technicians can also open and view documents without taking their hands away from whatever they’re working on.

If you’re not familiar with augmented reality, a couple of examples come to mind. One is the Terminator franchise, in which Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cyborg sees additional information as it scans its surrounding landscape. Another is the popular Pokémon Go game, which uses smartphones to overlay a digital game over an actual map of your location.

Photo credit: The Manufacturer - Car and Driver
Photo credit: The Manufacturer - Car and Driver

While Porsche is claiming to be the first to deploy augmented reality to technician service at scale, the technology has already found other large-scale automotive uses. Automakers such as Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and Audi have used it to create digital, interactive vehicle owner’s manuals, and Jaguar has toyed with an augmented-reality windshield technology called Virtual Windscreen.

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Porsche is launching Tech Live Look at three dealerships in May, with a goal of having 75 dealers using it by the end of this year before rolling it out to all of its 189 U.S. dealers in 2019.

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