Are Rokid Glasses any help in car repairs?
Rokid Glasses can help with car repairs by providing hands-free AI assistance, real-time visual overlays, and remote expert collaboration.
Repair Benefits
• Hands-free guidance: View step-by-step repair manuals or diagrams directly in your field of view without holding a phone or paper.
• Live remote support: Stream your exact first-person view to a more experienced mechanic or technician for real-time troubleshooting.
• Voice-controlled AI: Ask questions and get quick repair facts or part locations aloud while your hands are busy under the hood.
Limitations
• No direct diagnostics: They cannot physically interface with your car's OBD-II port to pull error codes on their own.
• Battery and heat: Extended use under a hot car hood or during long diagnostic sessions can strain the device's battery life.
“The future isn’t just around the corner; it’s sitting right on your nose. Virtually all experts view smart glasses featuring augmented reality—technology that overlays digital content onto the real-world view—as having a promising future. Much like a car’s head-up display, these glasses project virtual elements into the wearer's field of vision.
For instance, a speaker giving a presentation could view a teleprompter displaying their text—visible only to them, not the audience.
A built-in camera allows for more than just first-person photos and videos. If an AI application is running on a connected smartphone, the user can photograph objects or living things in their surroundings and ask what they are, receiving the answer via small speakers in the glasses' frames.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has been offering such smart marvels since last year. They are manufactured by EssilorLuxottica, the company behind brands like Ray-Ban and Oakley. Meta primarily integrates its glasses with its own services, Instagram and Facebook, enabling quick photo and video sharing—and, of course, AI capabilities are included.
A lesser-known Chinese manufacturer is now bringing to market the features Meta’s glasses still lack. Rokid, a company founded in 2014, has introduced the "Rokid Glasses" (priced at 700 euros); their major innovation is image projection directly onto the lenses. Even at first glance, you can see transparent, slightly bluish, stamp-sized areas within the lenses. The glasses display text-based content at a resolution of 640 × 480 pixels, using the green typeface characteristic of early PC monitors. It is a far cry from a modern head-up display—monochromatic and low-resolution—yet one can sense the potential here, and the fascination is immediate.
We pick up a book and say, 'Hi Roki, what do you see?' The AI assistant briefly focuses, snaps a photo, and—after a few annoying chimes reminiscent of the EU speed-limit monitor in modern cars—recites in a synthetic voice what it knows about the book, its plot, and the author; and it knows quite a lot.
The voice—which unfortunately cannot be changed—sounds like a sultry young woman; it is hard to tolerate, not least because she speaks with forced slowness and constantly emphasizes her submissive persona through flowery greetings.
In the next test, we ask Roki what she sees on our PC monitor, and the answer is astonishing: Roki reads the text displayed there and analyzes it. Impressive.
Subsequent attempts with the built-in AI also yield surprising results. We stand a short distance from a bookshelf and ask for a summary of the works gathered there. The response is prompt: the collection consists predominantly of history and politics, and Roki then lists the standard works she has singled out.
Out in the garden, the AI recognizes flowers and bushes.
The camera captures 12-megapixel photos and videos in either portrait or landscape orientation; videos can be recorded at up to 3K resolution and 30 frames per second. Quality is slightly inferior compared to Meta’s glasses. Filming while wearing the glasses means any head movement results in shaky footage. However, the perspective is interesting.
We ask the assistant to take a photo and send it to a specific person. She confirms the request, double-checks if the recipient is correct, and reports that the photo has been sent. But none of this actually happens. There is no such photo in the gallery, nor was any message sent. The AI simply hallucinated the whole thing.
After these experiments, we also wonder about the purpose of the display. Sure, it shows the text that the AI lady is reciting anyway. But one would have liked to see more advantages there.
So, we fire up the teleprompter. You upload the text via the smartphone app, and then start reading aloud. The software tracks our progress and scrolls the lines down in sync with our reading speed. A very impressive performance.
Next, we test the translator feature by watching a Turkish video on YouTube. It works impressively well once again; the text appears on the mini-display.
The display is also a real asset for navigation. It constantly shows directions, the estimated time of arrival, and a very schematic mini-map of the surroundings along the bottom edge.
As I said: it’s only monochrome and rather crude, but it gets the job done. What fails with frustrating regularity, however, are our attempts to create notes using the glasses.
As with other AI systems you can also record entire conversations or meetings here and have them summarized, though there are better specialized solutions for this—such as those from Plaud—which are also significantly cheaper.
Let’s take a look at the hardware: The glasses weigh 49 grams; they appear somewhat bulky due to the wide temples, yet they don’t necessarily make you stand out in a crowd. The right temple features a touch-sensitive pad that allows you to perform various actions. There is a button on the top of the temple, and its function can be programmed. You can make phone calls with the glasses; they also read out incoming notifications and display content.
The manufacturer specifies a battery life of six hours; charging is handled via a proprietary connector with pogo pins at the rear end of the temple. When recording is in progress, an LED light next to the left lens illuminates. It is not possible to install prescription lenses. If that is what you are looking for, take a look at the cheaper Glasses Neo; they cost 450 euros and do without the display.
Overall, the Rokid Glasses offer an exciting experience. They provide a glimpse into the future. The combination of always-available AI and audio output is fascinating in itself. However, you can get a translating "earpiece" for less money with certain standard earbuds. The display within the lenses expands the range of use cases. What the Rokid can do is just the beginning; many features aren't working yet. But the excitement is building.” [1]
1. Nase weiß: Eine Brille kennt sich aus. Mit Augmented Reality und Künstlicher Intelligenz offenbart sie verblüffende Talente. Sie blendet Antworten auf Fragen in die Gläser ein. Nicht nur das. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Frankfurt. 05 May 2026: T4. Von Michael Spehr
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