Ambient Assisted Living

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL, occasionally also Active Assisted Living) comprises methods, concepts, (electronic) systems, products as well as services, which support the everyday life of elderly and also disabled People situation-dependent and unobtrusive support. The term can be described as "everyday assistance solutions for a self-determined life." The techniques and technologies used are user-centered, i.e., geared toward people, and integrate into their immediate living environment. Consequently, the technology adapts to the user's needs and not vice versa. In order to share contextual information, technologies in the AAL environment can usefully be modular and network capable infrastructure in order to exhibit pseudo-intelligent behavior. However, this feature is not mandatory.

The group of users of such technology is very heterogeneous. It includes both healthy and active elders, who mainly use lifestyle functions to increase quality of life, to multimorbid people who should be enabled to live independently in their home environment for a longer period of time. Here, the support is not limited to those directly affected, but explicitly includes caregivers, physicians and family members, for example, through enhanced communications possibilities and facilitated social interaction.

Motivation and objective
Essentially, the increasing development of AAL technologies is driven by demographic transformation. AAL technology can help to absorb the massive cost increases in the healthcare system. Also motivating AAL is the trend toward living alone and increasing demands on quality of life. AAL technologies could, for example, enable people with walking difficulties or dementias to maintain their independence in everyday life for longer period of time. AAL technologies also make it possible to meet rising comfort and safety needs, as well as facilitate communication and Integration with the social environment.

Application examples and scenarios
Commonly cited use cases are in the areas of security, comfort, and entertainment. These include automatic shutdown of the stove when the user is absent, protective measures against burglaries, and context-dependent lighting, room temperature or music control adapted to the user's habits. Particularly significant for ambient assisted living is the ability to switch off all lamps, heaters and other electrical appliances with a click of the smartphone. It can also make it easier for people in need of assistance to get out of bed by opening shutters automatically and switching on the heating at predefined times. Safety can be improved if intelligent smoke detectors also inform relatives or neighbors if a fire is suspected. If something moves around the apartment or house at night, music, lights and television simulate that someone is at home. A Walker that can also be enhance to assist routing, finding back home or integrating monitoring telemedical device during walking and emergency support.

In a mostly self-learning system, sensors are networked and their data fused and evaluated, allowing routine tasks to be performed, for example. If the resident is at risk or overwhelmed, the "thinking" system offers age-appropriate assistance, makes suggestions for solving problems, involves external service providers (such as security companies or telemedicineic centers) or even triggers an emergency message.

AAL services often have a modular structure. The modular structure is helpful to design the supporting services tailored to the needs of people that require those services for an independent living.

Learning Tasks

 * How can an Open Innovation Ecosystem help to build such modular services?
 * Analyze Speech Recognition for integration in an AAL approach?
 * How can sensors be used in a private environment and how can privacy of the data be assured especially for medical data?
 * (Risk Management) Explain how Risk Management workflows and concepts can be integrated into AAL.