Athanasios Psaltis

Mr. Athanasios Psaltis

Information Technologies Institute, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Thessaloníki, Kentrikí Makedonía, Greece
orcid

Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

11Years (2016-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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10 November 2016
Verified
Conference Paper
Open access
Athanasios PsaltisAthanasios Psaltis
Athanasios Psaltis
KKKyriaki Kaza
Kyriaki Kaza
KSKiriakos Stefanidis
Kiriakos Stefanidis
STSpyridon Thermos
Spyridon Thermos
KAKonstantinos C. Apostolakis
Konstantinos C. Apostolakis
PDPetros Daras
Petros Daras
A challenging research issue, which has recently attracted a lot of attention, is the incorporation of emotion recognition technology in serious games applications, in order to improve the quality of interaction and enhance the gaming experience. To this end, in this paper, we present an emotion recognition methodology that utilizes information extracted from multimodal fusion analysis to identify the affective state of players during gameplay scenarios. More specifically, two monomodal classifiers have been designed for extracting affective state information based on facial expression and body motion analysis. For the combination of different modalities a deep model is proposed that is able to make a decision about player's affective state, while also being robust in the absence of one information cue. In order to evaluate the performance of our methodology, a bimodal database was created using Microsoft's Kinect sensor, containing feature vectors extracted from users' facial expressions and body gestures. The proposed method achieved higher recognition rate in comparison with mono-modal, as well as early-fusion algorithms. Our methodology outperforms all other classifiers, achieving an overall recognition rate of 98.3%.

21 June 2016
Verified
Book Chapter
Open access
PDF file
KKKyriaki Kaza
Kyriaki Kaza
Athanasios PsaltisAthanasios Psaltis
Athanasios Psaltis
KSKiriakos Stefanidis
Kiriakos Stefanidis
KAKonstantinos C. Apostolakis
Konstantinos C. Apostolakis
STSpyridon Thermos
Spyridon Thermos
PDPetros Daras
Petros Daras
In this paper, we present an emotion recognition methodology that utilizes information extracted from body motion analysis to assess affective state during gameplay scenarios. A set of kinematic and geometrical features are extracted from joint-oriented skeleton tracking and are fed to a deep learning network classifier. In order to evaluate the performance of our methodology, we created a dataset with Microsoft Kinect recordings of body motions expressing the five basic emotions (anger, happiness, fear, sadness and surprise) which are likely to appear in a gameplay scenario. In this five emotions recognition problem, our methodology outperformed all other classifiers, achieving an overall recognition rate of 93 %. Furthermore, we conducted a second series of experiments to perform a qualitative analysis of the features and assess the descriptive power of different groups of features.

1 January 2020
Verified
Book Chapter
Closed access
PDF file
DDDawei Du
Dawei Du
LWLongyin Wen
Longyin Wen
Pengfei ZhuPengfei Zhu
Pengfei Zhu
HFHeng Fan
Heng Fan
QHQinghua Hu
Qinghua Hu
ZLZiming Liu
Ziming Liu

19 March 2019 in Journal of Computers in Education
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
PDF file
KSKiriakos Stefanidis
Kiriakos Stefanidis
Athanasios PsaltisAthanasios Psaltis
Athanasios Psaltis
KAKonstantinos C. Apostolakis
Konstantinos C. Apostolakis
Kosmas DimitropoulosKosmas Dimitropoulos
Kosmas Dimitropoulos
PDPetros Daras
Petros Daras

23 September 2016 in International Journal of Serious Games
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
KAKonstantinos Cornelis Apostolakis
Konstantinos Cornelis Apostolakis
Athanasios PsaltisAthanasios Psaltis
Athanasios Psaltis
KSKiriakos Stefanidis
Kiriakos Stefanidis
KKKyriaki Kaza
Kyriaki Kaza
STSpyridon Thermos
Spyridon Thermos
PDPetros Daras
Petros Daras
Amidst an ongoing debate surrounding the traditional dichotomy of whether video games are good or bad for children, in this paper we present Path of Trust, a novel, prosocial game that aims at helping children understand the importance of teamwork and learn how and when to express trustworthiness. We have created a colorful, non-violent digital game, in which children aged 7-10 can be exposed to prosocial content and develop specific prosocial attitudes, such as cooperation and trustworthiness, driven by the fact that video games with prosocial content can be used to improve social interactions. The game was designed to maintain an attractive and engaging nature, which is usually associated with games that are often vilified within social circles in terms of being packed with tons of action and violence. We conducted two separate studies to test our game’s modeling of prosocial behavior, which demonstrate the potential of the game as a tool for teaching important prosocial behavior to children.

23 June 2016
Verified
Book Chapter
Open access
PDF file
KAKonstantinos C. Apostolakis
Konstantinos C. Apostolakis
KKKyriaki Kaza
Kyriaki Kaza
Athanasios PsaltisAthanasios Psaltis
Athanasios Psaltis
KSKiriakos Stefanidis
Kiriakos Stefanidis
STSpyridon Thermos
Spyridon Thermos
PDPetros Daras
Petros Daras
In this paper, a two-player digital game is presented, that attempts to balance the exciting game content and story-driven elements mostly associated with games in the entertainment industry with a serious game agenda. The latter focuses on teaching children aged 7–10 the importance of understanding the benefits of cooperation as well as expressing trustworthiness. Gamification of Prosocial Theory has led to several game mechanics being redefined, in order to turn traditional games’ elements of competition into cooperation evaluation mechanisms. Using these mechanisms, children are called upon to adapt their gameplay behavior towards expressing prosociality and understanding each other’s needs. Our experiments solidify this concept, by showcasing promising indications on the game’s potential to help children understand when it is a good idea to adopt a prosocial behavior.