Innovation Award Profile: Coast RL35R Voice-Controlled Headlamp

Q: What makes this product innovative?

A: It's the first headlamp in the world that lets you control it through really easy, intuitive commands and it works every time. You can easily control the headlamp by saying, "Coast off. Coast red." This is our most advanced headlamp we've ever made. It's 1,100 lm, fully featured, it has our classic Coast pure beam focusing design, variable light control, and all you have to do to use it is talk. 

Coast has been designing products for over 106 years for professionals that make their lives and jobs safer and easier. Keeping your hands free of having to fiddle with your headlamp and get to the light by using voice control is something we're really excited about. 

Q: What was the inspiration behind creating this product?

A: Outside of designing for professionals that make their lives and jobs safer and easier, Coast is always looking to innovate around lighting solutions for professionals. We were one of the first to market with a rechargeable flashlight and headlamp almost 25 years ago. We have a focusing system to get from flood to spot beams. When you translate that technology into headlamps, it only makes sense to introduce voice control as the kind of operating system to control the headlamps. As more advanced headlamps have come into the space, they've gotten really complicated to control and manage. There's three buttons, you don't know which does what. You might be turning on the red when you needed the white, or you don't know how to get to the spot. So enabling voice and perfecting that system for Coast, we spent a lot of time doing that so that every time you talk to it, it gets the command right. The driving force behind it is developing innovative solutions that make our customers jobs easier and safer, and voice control and lighting works really well for that. 

Q: How will this product improve the lives of technicians and shop owners? 

A: You can kind of just easily translate the benefit to, maybe you're under the hood, crawling into tight engine compartments and you need both hands free when you're holding your tools or hoses or sensors. Voice control is going to enable you to switch between flipping the headlamp on and off. Super simple operation, something you're going to do all the time. Going down in brightness to reduce glare when you're looking at wire work, body paint, welding, fabrication, anytime you're inside the car, you need your hands to do your job. You're not going to want to fiddle around with controlling your headlamps. The headlamp, of course, has buttons, you can still push them and control it. It has a button on the bottom that allows you to activate voice control, so when it's not active it's not listening. All that information is stored on board, so you don't have to connect it to WiFi or your app or anything like that. You just push your button, it starts listening. When it's on, it's always going to be listening for your next command. It doesn't have hardly any drain on the battery, and we build these to last a complete shift for technicians so you're not having to switch out the battery or run out of light when you need it most. 

Q: What has been the feedback from technicians who’ve purchased this tool? 

A: The feedback's been really strong. We released the product, it's winning awards, it's getting recognition from everyone in the industry. Technicians particularly love the handsfree nature of the headlamp. It's working really well for them. It's a super advanced headlamp and, of course, we're not stopping with this headlamp for designing a lot more in that voice catalog to continue to service specific needs of those customers so they've got the right light for the job. 

Q: Anything else our readers should know? 

A: It's available and we're really excited about it! The RL35R is the most advanced headlamp that we've ever released. It's got the voice control technology, we're building voice as an operating system into more and more headlamps. Different designs, different features, different benefits are going to be rolling out to market. We're just getting started with the RL35R, but we really believe strongly in the technology, our commitment to this category, our commitment to professionals relying on tools to get their job done, and we'll keep innovating for them.