Fraunhofer Center for Assistive Information and Communication Solutions – AICOSFraunhofer AICOS will be present at the conference “European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Aging”, which will be held in Brussels on the 3rd April. The conference’s subtitle – “From Plan to Action” – clearly demonstrates its main objective: to reunite the stakeholders in the field of active aging, who will together discuss how to move from the planning phase – delivered with the Strategic Implementation Plan – to implementing concrete actions.
As 2012 is the “European Year for Active Ageing”, this is a crucial initiative for stakeholders to debate how innovative thinking and smarter use of innovation can help address the socio-demographic challenge of ageing and how to turn this challenge into an opportunity. Real life examples of innovation in this field will be displayed in the exhibition open to all throughout the conference.
Fraunhofer AICOS, being an institution that is seriously focused on addressing the issue of active aging, will naturally be one of the exhibitors. Therefore, visitors and participants will have the opportunity to take a closer look at some of Fraunhofer AICOS market-oriented solutions in this field, like the Smart Companion and Android applications AlzNav and Dance Don’t Fall.
At the conference, Fraunhofer AICOS representatives will also disclosure the research center’s expertise in the area of predicting and detecting human falls using smartphones – which can be demonstrated by the projects Dance Don’t Fall, Mover and Fall Prevention – as well as the AAL4ALL project, a pioneering initiative in Portugal in the field of active ageing and in addressing the demographic problems with technological and market-oriented solutions.
The Ambient Assisted Living for All (AAL4ALL) is one of Fraunhofer AICOS’ key projects, involving 34 partners (including public institutions, industry, users’ organizations and R&D institutions) and a planned volume of 8,5 Million €. Fraunhofer AICOS not only inspired the project, but is also its technical leader. Started in March 2011, the main objective is to create an industrial ecosystem of products and services in the scope of ‘Ambient Assisted Living’.
Although technologies for AAL are already available and often in use, these ‘first offers’ are still monolithic, incompatible (and thus expensive) and potentially not sustainable. The AAL4ALL project intends to address this issue by defining a business model validated through large-scale trial.
The last AAL4ALL was held in ‘Universidade do Minho’ on the 1st and 2nd of March, with the participation of circa 70 people from all the involved partners. The meeting was devoted to presenting the results of previous user’s surveys and to brainstorm about the possible architecture and business model for AAL products and services.
The next AAL4ALL meeting will be held in 5-6 of July at FEUP, Porto.
Source: 27.03.2012, Fraunhofer Portugal