Fraunhofer Center for Assistive Information and Communication Solutions – AICOS
Fraunhofer Center for Assistive Information and Communication Solutions – AICOS

Fraunhofer AICOS presence at CES 2012 with Dance! Don’t Fall

Fraunhofer AICOS’ director, Dirk Elias, attended the Consumer Electronics Show 2012 in order to promote AICOS’ work in creating useful Android applications, namely the most recent “Dance! Don’t Fall” app.

CES is the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow and the 2012 edition was held in Las Vegas, from 10th to 13th January. The organization estimates that 153.000 people attended the event, a new all-time record. Due to the importance and visibility of this show, Fraunhofer AICOS’ presence was an excellent way of promoting its work among professionals in the technology field.

“Dance! Don’t Fall” application was also submitted to the CES 2012 Mobile Apps Showdown, being one of the top-25 applications in the contest and receiving a positive review from one of the apps’ page editors. This Android application addresses a very serious issue for older adults: the risk of falling.

The app allows for seniors to monitor and to actively reduce their risk of falling, through fun and easy dance exercises. All the user has to do is follow the dance steps provided by the application, with audio and video cues.

It also works on Google TV – this way, the user can just follow along with the virtual dance instructor. After analyzing the users dance steps and its answers of a short questionnaire, “Dance! Don’t Fall” provides feedback on their risk of falling.

Another useful feature is allowing for multiplayers, so that the user can start a “competition” with friends, which helps addressing another issue that affects older adults: isolation.

You can visit here this project’s website and the promotion video.

While at CES 2012, AICOS’ director Dirk Elias distributed some original “Dance! Don’t Fall” related postcards which included QR codes linking to the Android Market page where the app could be downloaded. This way, many people were able to try and evaluate it.

There was also at the CES a Fraunhofer AICOS’ roll-up presenting other products developed at the R&D center, like the Mover app (5th place at the II Android Development Challenge), the AlzNav (finalist at the Vodafone Foundation Smart Accessibility Awards) and the Smart Companion (finalist at the ZON Prize 2011). The roll-up also included QR codes to each one of these products, which allowed many CES attenders to try them.

 

Source: 25.01.2012, Fraunhofer Portugal