These are the research projects I have worked in as a research associate. Project names with an arrow () on their left are the ones where I am the principal investigator.

SIREN (Social games for conflIct REsolution based on natural iNteraction)
Description:  Improving conflict resolution skills among the population at large is of paramount importance for a healthier, more peaceful and productive European society. These skills are best taught in early years, using teaching tools that are appropriate and engaging for today's children, for whom computer games and social networks are natural parts of life. The SIREN project aims to create a new type of educational game, the conflict resolution game, which takes advantage of recent advances in serious games, social networks, computational intelligence and emotional modelling to create uniquely motivating and educating games that can help shape how children think about and handle conflict. The software developed by the project will be able to automatically generate conflict scenarios that fit the teaching needs of particular groups of children with varying cultural background, maturity, and technical expertise, and the desired learning outcomes as specified by a teacher. This will enable the system to be used by school teachers all over Europe, without specific technical training. To realize this vision, a number of advances to the state of the art will be made throughout the various disciplines that members of our thoroughly multi-disciplinary consortium specialize in.

Partners: National Technical University of Athens (GR-Coordinator), IT University of Copenhagen (DK), Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa (PT), Serious Games Interactive (SGI), University of Bath (UK), University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC)
Funding scheme: FP7-ICT-2009-5
Start: September 2010, End: August 2013.

AGameComIn (Adaptive Content Creation using Computational Intelligence)
Description:  The principal goal of the AGameComIn project is to enhance the experience of computer game-players by developing computational intelligence algorithms that learn mappings between game features and player satisfaction, and the use of computational models as evaluation functions for game content such as rules and environments. Stochastic global optimizers such as evolutionary algorithms are then used to search the spaces of game rules and environments to automatically create entertaining game content. The main outcome of the project will be technology that increases the productivity of industrial game development and enables the creation of new types of video games.

Partners: University of Southern Denmark (DK), Limbo ApS (DK)
Funding scheme: Danish Research Agency, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Denmark.
Start: August 2009, End: July 2012.

CEPEG (Capturing and Enhancing Player Entertainment in Cames)
Description: The research goals of this 2-year project are to model in real time computer game players/users satisfaction and strategies for commercial games using information available from the game platform, and to construct software able to do this. To achieve these goals the plan is to devise a method that efficiently identifies qualitative features contributing to player satisfaction; design quantitative measures for these features; investigate the correlation between the type of player, the real-time satisfaction estimation and the quantitative feature values and develop and implement AI techniques based on user modelling and machine learning that will augment the entertainment value of the game in real-time.

Official title of the project: "Measuring and Enhancing Player Satisfaction in Computer Games Using Machine Learning Techniques"

Partners: Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute/University of Southern Denmark (DK)
Project funded by: Danish Research Agency, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Denmark.
Start: January 2006, End: December 2007.

Playware
Objective: The aim of the "playware" research is to develop products that use IT to create play equipment and play environments that can stimulate children and youth to engage in physical, social play and playful learning. In particular, the aim is to identify and explore the possibilities afforded by mobile and ambient intelligence computing for developing new play environments. The play environments invite physical activating play to become an important factor in the community's fight against an increasing child obesity problem.

Description of research: Entertainment Modeling for Adaptive Interactive Physical Games.

Partners: Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute/University of Southern Denmark (DK), The Danish University of Education (DK), Kompan A/S (DK), Wirtek A/S (DK).
Funding scheme: (in part) Danish Research Agency, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Denmark.
 

EURON Network
Objective: EURON is a community of people with a common interest: robots. It brings together the best European robotics groups and resources in research, industry and education. EURON aims to demonstrate Europe's world class position in robotics.

Description of research: Development of a web repository on European robotics research including both industry and academia

Funding scheme: EUropean RObotics research Network (EURON), European Union.

PLANET, European Network of Excellence in AI Planning
Objective: AI Planning is a key enabling technology for intelligent systems. It increases the autonomy, flexibility, and robustness for a wide variety of application systems. These include web-based information and e-commerce systems, autonomous virtual and physical agents, and systems for the design and monitoring of production, management, and business processes. PLANET is the European coordinating organisation for research and development in the field of AI Planning and Scheduling. It aims to stimulate innovative research and development and to promote the industrial uptake of the technology. PLANET supports activities that foster progress in research and development. It promotes the exchange and collaboration between academic and industrial sites through training and technology transfer activities. It maintains a supporting information and communication infrastructure and represents a comprehensive source of technological expertise.

Description of research: Development of a web repository on AI Planning and Scheduling.

Funding scheme: Information Society Technologies (Fifth Framework), European Union.