Mercedes-Benz Adds Augmented Reality to Car Servicing

Mercedes-Benz has a new solution that could dramatically change how vehicles are serviced at dealerships. Called Virtual Remote Support and powered by Microsoft, it’s a powerful mixed-reality diagnostics and repair tool that promises faster and more precise vehicle servicing for customers and dealers across the country.

When everything goes according to plan, it’s business as usual for technicians. However, when faced with an unexplained or intermittent fault or failure, they can get help from a team of specialists by putting on the HoloLens 2 headset.

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No need to turn to a computer and search for the car’s electrical schematics, for instance. Now, the technicians can save time and energy by accessing the information right from their headset while keeping both hands free.

With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, the remote technical specialists work with the onsite technicians in an immersive mixed reality environment and can share intricate 3D images and holograms, see where changes need to be made, annotate the visual information, add documents and insert instructions to highlight which areas to focus on. 

Ultimately, this helps decrease the time it takes to resolve maintenance questions, increases the productivity of dealer technicians and allows for more efficient flow of operations at service bays.

Beginning in July of this year, Mercedes-Benz Canada became the first automotive company in the country to deploy the technology to every dealership in its national network. All Mercedes-Benz dealerships from coast to coast now use it, with fully bilingual applications included.

The German automaker sees augmented reality as critical for technician training, especially with new electric vehicles and advanced technologies rapidly coming to market.