Our ability to estimate time is critical in every aspect of our life and yet, unlike other perceptual dimensions, we do not possess a sense organ specifically dedicated to time. Rather, subjective time seems to result from a conglomerate of brain processes that allow us to time our behavior in order to act in a highly complex world. The subjective percept of time is not unitary and is not equal to physical duration and can be distorted by a wide variety of factors. This distortion(s) may, however, yield to a beneficial impact on our behavior by boosting the efficiency of stimulus processing, facilitating cognitive functioning, and enhancing decision-making.
ChronoPilot’s novel paradigm is to utilise the malleability of the subjective experience of time for our advantage at any moment. ChronoPilot aimed to control the plasticity of human time perception by delivering stimuli via mediated-reality technology into the human’s senses of vision, audition, and haptics. The proposed technological breakthrough to purposefully manipulate subjective time relied on a set of cognitive approaches, which were based on findings in both neuroscience and psychology to tune time experience. We aimed at a comprehensive understanding of time modulation, through modelling of key variables and the interplay of different senses in human time perception. The exploited cognitive approaches were translated through a set of body-worn technologies into particular stimuli that were fed dynamically into the human’s senses of vision, audition, and haptics as a function of the situation, sensory integration and physiological indicators of mental workload, stress, and flow. ChronoPilot aimed to improve individual lives and interactions with other humans, as well as with novel artificial systems.
ChronoPilot provided proof-of-value in two real-world scenarios. In the first scenario, we manipulated time to improve the control of a user over multiple drones in precision farming (in virtual reality). In the second scenario, we created flow in the cooperation of a group of humans in an industrial production setting (augmented reality). ChronoPilot was realized through the interdisciplinarity of its consortium, which was comprised of experts in cognitive science, neuroscience, perception, behavioural modelling, artificial intelligence, mediated reality, and robotics. Our novel methods of time modulation will pave the way for innovative applications and products improving efficiency, well-being, productivity, creativity, and safety.