Industry 5.0 is a paradigm shift where human-centric innovation, sustainability, and ethics are the foundation of technology development. This study examines the ability of Quantum Machine Learning (QML) and Internet of Things (IoT) integration to drive the Industry 5.0 revolution through energy efficiency, openness, and secure data management. The innovations comprise green quantum computing for energy savings, quantum explainability for enhancing ethical decision-making, and quantum blockchain for building trust in industrial networks. A five-layer Quantum IoT (QIoT) architecture is proposed, incorporating adaptive feedback and ethical governance, to align with the principles of Industry 5.0. Practical applications like optimizing sustainable supply chains, disaster resilience, and enabling Quantum Digital Twins (QDTs) for smart manufacturing are described. Scaling up nascent quantum technologies while ensuring ethical integrity is also explored in this article, and a roadmap for developing sustainable, human-centric industrial systems is presented. Furthermore, this article addresses the ethical aspects of QML in Industry 5.0, namely, guaranteeing fairness, transparency, and responsible AI use. These challenges need to be surmounted in order to align QML innovations with Industry 5.0’s people-first values.
Ahmed et al. (2026) studied this question.