REALITY CHECK: Famed producer launches tech company in ILM to revolutionize auto industry training

What do the “Blair Witch Project,” Madden NFL video games, and groundbreaking artificial intelligence and virtual reality technology all have in common? 

The answer: Robin Cowie, founder and CEO of Skillmaker and a master of immersive, first-person point-of-view experiences. Skillmaker is the latest arrival to Wilmington's blossoming tech industry, and uses cutting-edge digital experiences to address issues in the automotive industry. The result? An entirely revamped automotive ecosystem that stretches from high schools to board rooms to cultivate a higher return on investment not just for companies, but for workers as well.

The company already raised $2.5 million (well surpassing their $1.5 million goal) and has major support from NAPA Auto Parts and recently presented its product at the Automotive Service & Tire Alliance (ASTA) Expo in September 2025.

VIRTUAL TRAINING: Skillmaker AI launches virtual training software. Image courtesy skillmaker.ai

From Months to Days

Most notably, this technology cuts the training time down from months (or years) to days. Students can acquire certifications in a fraction of the time using Skillmaker's immersive XR experience. Certifications that can take up two years to complete can be acquired in as little as two months. Moreover, Cowie says that Skillmaker can train a new student into an effective worker in 25 days. 

Skillmaker trains workers in a controlled digital environment where they acquire "on the job training," as traditional tests fail to measure practical, real-world competencies, according to the Minnesota Department of Education. It's more like flight simulator training, or a modern approach to classic apprenticeship.

Imagine this...

You strap on a virtual headset and walk into a digital garage. In front of you is a Honda Civic that needs new brake pads. You go through the process of jacking up the car safely, and you use the air wrench on the lug nuts to remove the tires. Then you remove the caliper bolts and move the caliper out of your way. Obstructions removed, you can remove the old brake pads and use a C-clamp to compress the caliper piston. Next, you insert the new pads and reassemble the array. 

Congratulations! You just finished your first technician simulation and you passed the test. You may have just earned an important ASE certification, or passed a job assessment for an employer.

Cowie says he wants to place Skillmaker into community colleges and high schools with automotive classes to give students an edge in the workplace, offering them an alternative path to the workforce. But this training isn't just for people entering the industry. Cowie sees it as a way to help people already in their career to up-skill and stay relevant without adding the stress and cost of going back to school to learn new techniques, skills, and systems. 

"The last 10 years has seen incredible change across every part of it [the automotive industry], you know. I don't think that's going to slow down," Cowie  says. "That's going to actually increase quite a bit."

Let's Talk Profits

This isn't just a benefit for workers though. During our conversation, I mentioned how rare it was that something comes along that's designed to help the company and the worker equally. It seems as though it's always one or the other. 

Cowie smiles. "The focus right from the early days wasn't just time-to-competency,” he says, “but time-to-profitability. The smart glasses in particular are really good because they help people solve their problems faster and communicate changes, as well as save and iterate those experiences for future reference. So if the answer isn't in say, the NAPA database, then it'll check an auto tech database, and find the answer. Then the answer is stored in Skillmaker and acts as a kind of a flywheel for techs across the board."

The result is that automotive businesses employ more highly trained and up-to-date technicians, and can repair vehicles faster than ever before. Thus, increasing profit and the ability to pay employees competitively to retain the best talent. 

Imagine this...

You're a career automotive technician that specializes in diagnosing automotive issues. You're wearing Skillmaker smartglasses and you are working on a vehicle that has a tire pressure sensor not acting normally. You check the tire, visually and with a gauge to see that the tire pressure is fine. You check the sensor and check the tire pressure sensor with a voltmeter. It reads 0. You ask the Skillmaker glasses, "Is there an issue with GM truck tire pressure sensors?" 

In this example, let's say there are no known issues. You add that you have just run into a tire pressure issue for this vehicle model and you explain how you fixed it (you replace it). The glasses log the new entry into the database and any Skillmaker user now has access to it. Now, the AI function can calculate how often this issue occurs and whether it is a rare occurrence, or a common issue. But most importantly, it knows how to fix it. 

Businesses with Skillmaker also have access to their job assessment technology that eliminates the guesswork of traditional hiring practices. If someone comes in for an interview, the business can assess them live in Skillmaker to see their competency and skill, instead of just reading a resume or calling references. This assessment technology can provide a young adult fresh out of high school or college the opportunity they need for an entry-level job, and provide mid or late career professionals with the opportunity to move to advanced positions, opening entry-level roles. All while increasing profitability and return on investments for individual businesses. All while selling more auto parts for manufacturers. All while providing a reliable option for people to repair their vehicle instead of replace it.

This is Skillmaker's vision. According to Cowie, Skillmaker is more of an AI platform than a virtual reality tool, though it currently uses such hardware as Quest 3 headsets and Meta Glasses. According to its website, Skillmaker "combines AI with cutting-edge XR technology to deliver tailored, high-impact training that adapts to your business and people." As Cowie points out, it's a restructuring of the entire ecosystem, not just a new tool for your family mechanic.

Mining for Ideas

Cowie was born and raised in apartheid South Africa. His father, Les Cowie, was hired as an instructor to train workers in a gold mine in the 1960s. At the time, none of the miners spoke English, and few, if any, were literate in any language. The mine owners had been sending workers down in the mine with pickaxes, dynamite, and no training whatsoever. According to Cowie, "Things…did not go well."

So one day, Les took his 16 mm camera down the mine and began making instructional films from the miner's point of view and training them based on firsthand knowledge. Cowie's job was to bring his father fresh film in the mines and return the used film back to the surface for his father to develop later, and found a passion for filmmaking. In the end, the mine became a safer place to work just from one person taking the time to explore a different point-of-view. 

When Cowie grew up, he used the same techniques to produce the groundbreaking 1999 horror film, "The Blair Witch Project," and later served as Lead Narrative Designer for Madden NFL 2018, 2019, and 2020, the three most successful iterations of the franchise. His particular eye for detail has been consulted for other game franchises, such as "Star Wars" and FIFA, and he served as Director of Technology for HELO, and as the Producer for Haxan films. It was here that he started creating first-person experiences and adding digital elements, or digital elements on top of physical elements. "A phigital experience," Cowie calls it.

But it wasn't until he agreed to help his father with a new project that the twinklings of Skillmaker began.

Now in London, Les Cowie embarked on a new missionary project to rehabilitate prisoners in the UK. The idea was to offer trade skills training for inmates to help them find employment upon release, instead of falling victim to the crime-prison-release-repeat cycle. The Electrical Helper Program, a current and highly successful program, trains inmates using virtual reality to "equip individuals with the skills and knowledge for entry level-roles." Cowie agreed to help his father, taking charge of the digital and VR side of the things. The end result took training time down from 8 months to 10 days, approximately a 95% acceleration time. 

"We had someone in the program, who in 10 days, said she'd become the highest earner in her family. In 10 days. And I was like, 'Wow, okay, this is a lot more meaningful than movies or video games or anything else I've done in the past,' which I love."

Immediately, Cowie saw enterprise-scale potential for this technology, and in a twist of fate or luck, was introduced to Jon Ellsworth at NAPA about the same time and according to Cowie, "We just connected so much, and the more we dug into the challenges that NAPA was having, the more I realized that this was a really good application of what we had done with electricians."

During his conversations with Jon he discovered that there was plenty of information and training for automotive technicians, but that it was highly underutilized, the processes were slow, or ineffective, or even out-of-date. In addition, there is currently a massive national employment shortage in the automotive technician industry. 

According to Wrenchway, an automotive industry blog, this shortage exists because training in schools is not staying up-to-date with new vehicle models, poor working conditions (such as no climate control or benefits), and subpar salary. For example, the average technician in America only makes about $20 an hour and the suggested living wage in America is $25 an hour, with those numbers swinging wildly in different regions, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Then take into consideration that over half of interviewed technicians say they spend over $60,000 on tools over the course of their career, because individual shops rarely provide them. Wrenchway estimates that during 2020-2024, there was a shortage of 642,000 auto/diesel/collision technicians nationwide and that number is growing. 

With the obvious need for change, it seems Skillmaker is primed to revolutionize an antiquated system. But what about our other antiquated systems? Having successfully digitized electrician training and automotive training well on its way, could Skillmaker be the new standard training platform for all major manufacturing in 15 or 20 years? Could this be how we train technicians to build marine and aviation vehicles, railway systems, or even NASA rockets?

"I think there's a natural progression from automotive," Cowie says, "that's our beach head, if you will. That's the area that we're going to focus on and we're going to focus on it for a bit. We're probably going to go from automotive into transportation because there's so many things that are relevant there."

Why Wilmington?

Perhaps the most pleasantly surprising part of the Skillmaker story is "Why Wilmington?" It's not hard to understand why Skillmaker would settle in North Carolina, the state as a whole has an enthusiastic car culture and repair shops are common, not to mention that NASCAR headquarters is in Mooresville, just up I-77 from Charlotte. So why not there?

As it turns out, when Cowie was working with his father on the Electrical Helper Program, he agreed to do it on the condition that everyone could work remotely. At the time he and his wife had sold their house and were working and living in different AirBnBs all over the country looking for their next home. After about 14 months, they were on their way to Portland, Maine, and someone told them, "You know, if you guys are looking for a great place to live, you should look at Carolina Beach." 

A true waterman, Cowie likes to kayak and fish, after 14 months of travel the Carolina Beach lifestyle called him and his wife to stay.

"My wife, she's just addicted to looking for open houses and all kinds of stuff like that, and she found an open house in Carolina Beach," he continues. "We walked into that home and we just knew immediately that that's where we wanted to be. I love where Wilmington is right now, it's got a lot to prove–it's got a young energy to it. And I love the beach. I grew up on the beach my entire life. And then there's all these technology people, and proximity to Raleigh-Durham, and then just the quality of life and frankly, the people I've met–we just love living on that island." 

What's Next?

Cowie says that he's wrapping up the preliminary logistics for Skillmaker now, such as completing the knowledge database with NAPA, talking to investors, etc. But his big goal is to get to work here in Wilmington. 

"I'd really like to get my own center in Wilmington," he says, "and build something locally, test it with the local NAPA shops, test it with Cape Fear Community College, test it in high schools."

In reference to what potential job seekers can look forward to, Cowie says that sometime next year, "we're going to be looking for a Chief Technical Officer, for software developers, but also for automotive technicians, especially ones that have one foot in the automotive world and the other in the computer science world."

Which certainly seems accurate as today's rapidly evolving world continues to blur the line between physical and digital jobs. Perhaps everything is headed towards "phigital" experiences.

"I really think the technicians of today will be fixing the robots of tomorrow." Cowie says.

Learn more about Skillmaker at skillmaker.ai