The impact of augmented reality on learning curves and mental workload: A preliminary experimental study

The learning process has always been fundamental in the industrial environment to correctly learn the right process and to perform it faster, increasing efficiency by also minimizing errors, consequently. Nowadays, new technologies that are emerging in this field are based on augmented reality, and, through a motion capture architecture, it is possible to real-Time follow the operators' activities and guide them in the next ones, improving the learning process. Therefore, this paper presents an architecture setup and the first preliminary tests, realized in the Industrial Plants and Logistics Laboratory of the University of Padua, in order to study the benefits that this type of technology can provide. The main findings are the decrease in the time required to learn the job along with a smaller operator's cognitive workload during the training.