The car you drove to work this morning is made up of thousands of individual parts that had to be assembled in the right order and in the right way.

But for the workers behind every vehicle you pass on the road, the job demands speed, precision and repetition, with little room for error or on-the-job learning. A new hire may need to learn dozens of assembly steps and complete them in sync with a fast-moving production line from the first day on the job. The demanding pace can make it difficult for new employees to adjust and gain confidence before entering the production environment. 

To help prepare workers for the realities of automotive manufacturing, researchers at Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) partnered with Kia Georgia to develop a gamified virtual reality (VR) training platform that allows workers to learn, practice and make mistakes before stepping onto the production floor. 

“The need for this technology is clear,” said Mohsen Moghaddam, the Gary C. Butler Family Associate Professor in ISyE and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, who leads the research team behind this project. “New hires are placed in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment, where there is little room for error or on-the-line learning. For many workers, that transition can feel overwhelming.”

The project began in 2025 through a collaboration involving Kia Georgia in West Point, Georgia; Georgia Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing (Georgia AIM), a statewide effort advancing AI and manufacturing education across Georgia's industrial ecosystem; Georgia Quick Start, the state’s workforce training program operated through the Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG); and Spelman College.

"What makes Georgia one of the top states for business is that we collaborate and work together to solve some of the biggest challenges manufacturers face," said Steven Ferguson, managing director of Georgia AIM and deputy director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI). “This project brought together collaborators across industry, workforce development, and higher education to build a solution that would have been difficult to achieve alone.”

ISyE researchers were tasked with developing a VR training solution for Kia’s door assembly line, one of the many stations workers must master before beginning work in the plant.

While Kia already provides hands-on training through Georgia Quick Start, certain aspects of the production environment are difficult to replicate outside the factory floor. Researchers saw an opportunity to better prepare workers for the pace and pressure of assembly line work before their first day on the factory floor.  

Through site visits, demonstrations and conversations with workers and trainers, the research team gained a deeper understanding of the challenges new employees face on the production floor and a greater appreciation for the demands of the work. 

“I didn’t have any idea how hard or how fast-paced this type of work was before starting this project,” said Pantea Habibi, a postdoctoral researcher within ISyE and member of the project team. “It’s mentally and physically challenging for workers, and I like that our VR system can reduce a little bit of their struggle so that they learn faster and better.”  

The team’s gamified VR platform guides users through a series of progressively challenging learning stages. Trainees first observe a task being performed and then mirror an expert’s actions before practicing independently with increasing levels of responsibility. 

The training platform follows an apprenticeship-inspired progression. Trainees first watch an expert perform each task through the platform’s “ghost hands,” then practice with guidance from audio prompts and other on-screen cues. As they gain confidence and proficiency, that support gradually fades, allowing them to perform tasks independently. 

One of the platform’s key advantages is its ability to simulate the movement and pace of an active assembly line – conditions that would be difficult and costly to recreate in a traditional training environment. 

"In the virtual world, there's no material fatigue,” Ferguson added. “Being able to create an experience where trainees can practice over and over without worrying about wear and tear or damaging components creates a lot of value.”  

The team recently delivered a beta version of the platform and demonstrated it to Kia leadership, including the president and CEO of Kia Georgia. 

"This project demonstrates what's possible when industry, higher education, and workforce development partners work together toward a common goal,” said Stuart Countess, Kia Georgia’s President and CEO. “We appreciate the collaboration of Georgia Tech and Georgia Quick Start in helping prepare the next generation of Kia Georgia team members for success and generating excitement about careers in advanced manufacturing."

While the current version focuses on a single door assembly station, discussions are already underway to expand the technology to additional stations within the plant. 

For Moghaddam, the project represents ISyE’s human-centered approach to engineering by designing technologies that help people succeed. 

“Through this project and many others, the main question we seek to solve is how can we develop assistive technologies at the intersection of AI, robotics and extended reality (XR) that augment human capabilities rather than replace them,” he said.