Experimental study to investigate mental workload of local vs remote operator in human-machine interaction

A new Coronavirus disease 2019 has spread globally since 2019. Consequently, businesses from different sectors were forced to work remotely. At the same time, research in this area has seen a rise in studying and emerging technologies that allow and promote such a remote working style; not every sector is equipped for such a transition. The manufacturing sector especially, has faced challenges in this respect. This paper investigates the mental workload (MWL) of two groups of participants through a human-machine interaction task. Participants were required to bring a robotised cell to full production by tuning system and dispensing process parameters. Following the experiment, a self-assessment of the participants' perceived MWL using the raw NASA Task Load Index (RTLX) was collected. The results reveal that remote participants tend to have a lower perceived workload compared to the local participants, but mental demand was deemed higher while performance was rated lower.