Nonprofit turns to virtual reality to train more auto technicians

Vehicles for Change's auto technician training program was started to solve a problem. A lack of auto technicians meant the organization's donated vehicles were taking too long to be reconditioned, prolonging the time it took to get the cars to needy recipients.

The nonprofit's latest technician training initiative also was born from a challenge. The pandemic limited the number of people the program could train. Vehicles for Change CEO Marty Schwartz and board member Geoff Bund had an idea: Use virtual reality to train as many people as were interested.

"I want to take the program national," Schwartz said.

Virtual reality is used across a swath of industries for training, including health care, retail and manufacturing. Automotive designers use it to simulate the experience of driving a car. But its use to train U.S. Air Force pilots and maintenance crew members gave Bund the idea to use it at Vehicles for Change.

Bund was working as head of North American business development for a designer of high-end VR headsets that supplied the Air Force. Bund immediately saw the synergies with Vehicles for Change.

"This is specifically the type of thing VR can do a really good job at," he said. "It cuts down the time the trainees have to spend in the bottleneck part of the training."

Bund knew Scott Schneider, CEO of HTX Labs, a company in Houston that developed the Empact Immersive Training Platform the Air Force uses.

Schneider agreed to create an auto technician training "digital classroom" that would support the development and delivery of various lessons.

"We put an experienced auto mechanic trainer in the virtual environment and let them teach the course," Schneider said. "Empact captures everything the instructor says, does and interacts with, and this becomes the immersive training experience. [We] publish this lesson to our cloud-based platform, and it's immediately available to students to learn from the instructor."

HTX needed a digital rendering of a vehicle, and General Motors stepped up, allowing HTX to use a 3D model of the Chevrolet Equinox.

Using that digital model, HTX created a complete virtual garage. Vehicles for Change filmed an oil change so HTX could confirm it included all the tools needed for the task in that garage. An instructor wearing a VR headset then went into the digital garage and filmed himself doing a virtual oil change.

Empact captures this performance as an animated student — known as an avatar — that is interactive and quizzes the student, such as about why the right viscosity is important.

The animation, which Schneider called the "secret sauce," includes tasks such as opening the doors, taking a tire off the rim and checking the oil.

The VR training has several stages. First, the student watches a video of a real oil change. Then he or she goes into the virtual garage and watches the same lesson from a third-person perspective.

After taking a quiz about the process, the student dons a VR headset to perform a guided 15-step oil change from a first-person perspective. Then each step must be completed by the student and checked off virtually without assistance — the assessment stage.

Vehicles for Change and HTX are discussing adding additional lessons, including steering and suspension repairs, Schneider said.

"We will work with VFC to continue to add lessons to build out a full one-year curriculum," he said. "This is not a replacement [for physically doing hands-on repairs], but it is a better way to get prepared and proficient."

A grant from the State of Maryland funded the development of the VR training platform. Vehicles for Change owns the program, and Schwartz figures it can be a revenue generator, with all profits used to expand the nonprofit's mission.

"I can put a training program in any high school in the country for $50,000 using virtual reality," he said.

But helping prisoners is the main focus. Vehicles for Change is working with the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services and has a sale pending to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

"There is an awful problem in this country with people getting out of prison without any skills and no way to get a job," Schwartz said. "We can at least give them a fighting chance."

The Vehicles for Change program has helped David Hall dream big. Hall, 52, went through the training program after being released from prison last year. He had no previous experience working on cars. Now, he works as a service technician at Pohanka of Salisbury in Maryland, part of Pohanka Automotive Group.

The VR training wasn't available when he was in the program, but he has used it.

"It was like watching a movie in 3D. You are in the movie and star in it," Hall said.

He loves working as a service technician but has bigger plans.

"My goal is owning my own shop in the next 10 years or sooner," Hall said.