Bilingual Voice Assistant Aids Workshop Mechanics

A digital voice assistant has been developed to support workshop mechanics conducting vehicle inspections.

The joint venture by Continental and TecAlliance has created a prototype of what it calls the first voice assistant for vehicle workshops to assist mechanics during the initial vehicle inspection. The companies presented the proof of concept at the Automechanika trade fair in Frankfurt, Germany.

Based on Cortana voice-recognition technology for desktop and mobile devices, the companies claim the assistant currently understands more than 200 voice commands in German and English controlling 24 different workshop actions.

Users also can access 22.8 million labor times and 3.9 million repair instructions through an interface to the Repair and Maintenance Information of TecAlliance, a provider of aftermarket auto-data-management solutions.

Besides its primary use for vehicle inspection by the mechanic, the developers claim their assistant also could be used for several other functions when integrated into a workshop-management solution, such as to display prices or spare-part availability, or transfer the completed order to the accounting department for customer invoicing.

“The availability of and access to vehicle and product information are crucial to a workshop’s success,” says Jürgen Buchert, managing director-TecAlliance. “The voice assistant enables workshop processes, such as vehicle inspection at check-in and access to relevant repair information directly at the vehicle site, to be further optimized.

“These innovation initiatives have the potential to flow into new business models.”