Cognitive Augmentation in Industry 5.0: Comparing Mental Workload in VR, Humanoid Social Robots, and Video Learning

Preprint, 2025

As Industry 5.0 and its human-centric focus drive the integration of advanced technologies into operator education and training, understanding the cognitive demands imposed by these tools is critical for effective instructional design. This study presents a comparative assessment of mental workload associated with three cognitive augmentation technologies—Virtual Reality (VR), humanoid social robots, and video – during both learning and operational phases. We evaluated participants’ mental workload through completion time, error rate, the instrument Rating Scale Mental Effort (RSME), and heart rate variability (HRV) using an experimental framework for the task of assembling a drone. Our findings reveal that VR environments impose a higher mental workload during the learning phase and lead to longer task completion times and more mental effort. In contrast, both video-based instructions and humanoid robot modalities elicited moderate mental workload levels, of which video enabled the most efficient and accurate task completion with the lowest mental workload. The humanoid social robot-based instructions had an in-between impact, offering interactive guidance with a moderate mental workload and better performance outcomes compared to VR in the operational phase. These results offer new comparative insights into the cognitive implications of emerging instructional technologies and inform the design of adaptive, productivity-enhancing learning environments for Industry 5.0. By integrating physiological, performance-based, and subjective measures, the study advances our understanding of technology adoption, cognitive augmentation, and the optimisation of educational productivity in digitally mediated settings.