CYBERNETIC: Overcoming cybersickness in immersive multimedia experiences using subjective time perception

Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) have the potential to provide the required interactivity and immersiveness to enable lifelike remote presence. However, to cope with the need for interactivity during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, people have turned to traditional video conferencing tools, even if these have been deemed insufficient for an experience comparable to real interactions. The reason for not selecting AR/VR solutions is the physical discomfort that people suffer after wearing a Head Mounted Display (HMD) for a short while, i.e., cybersickness. Cybersickness symptoms range from reduced immersiveness, mild headache to nausea and vomit. Even if it affects about 90% of the AR/VR users, the topic has not broadly researched and only solutions tailored to specific cases have appeared. The purpose of CYBERNETIC is to design, develop and evaluate a generic cybersickness management system. To enable this objective, I aim to explore the subjective time perception theory, which states that humans perceive the duration of time differently depending on the activity pursued. Therefore, if the perception of time gets distorted, a feeling of mild discomfort occurs. This project will explore the link between subjective time perception and cybersickness.