ChronoPilot — Modulating Time Perception

Although time can be measured objectively, human time perception is remarkably subjective and influenced by cognitive states, individual motivations, and social factors. This malleability of perceived time can be evidenced, for instance, in stressful situations where one might experience a lack of time, while one might lose track of time in more relaxing circumstances. Based on fundamental knowledge from psychology and cognitive science, the ChronoPilot project aims at developing a prototype technology driven by artificial intelligence to extend or compress human subjective time adaptively and whenever required. Mediated-reality approaches, such as virtual and augmented reality, have enormous potential for presenting the users with visual, auditory, and haptic stimulation patterns that directly or indirectly influence their subjective time and which are difficult to reproduce in the real world. Going beyond individual settings, ChronoPilot will also investigate how to coordinate time plasticity in collaborative environments where one group member's actions may affect other members' perception. Different scenarios, where humans alone or humans and robots have to collaborate in realistic and virtual environments, will validate the planned research. In this paper, we present the fundamental concepts of our project ChronoPilot, which is a work in progress.