PERSONA: perceptive spaces promoting independent aging

The European FP-6 project PERSONA aims at the development of sustainable and affordable solutions for the social inclusion and independent living of Senior Citizen through harmonisation of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies and concepts.

Background

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) embraces all technological challenges in the context of Ambient Intelligence to face the problem of an aging population in Europe. AAL aims to develop the technological context in which elderly people can increase their independency. The PERSONA project believes that the application of new technologies can improve the quality of life of senior citizens. For that reason, the project will validate and analyze the future impact of the application of AAL technologies in different scenarios.

Objective

Translated to a more practical level will PERSONA develop a scalable open standard technological platform to build a broad range of AAL Services. It will demonstrate and test the concept in real life implementations, assess their social impact and establish the initial business strategy for future deployment of the proposed technologies and services.

Project description

To enable AAL to realy empower senior citizens to live at home with greater autonomy, independence and safety, four challenges have been identified:

The scientific challenge to find solutions for social inclusion, for support in daily life activities, for early risk detection, for personal protection from health and environmental risks, for support in mobility.
The technical challenge to develop an integrated technological platform that allows the practical implementation of the Ambient Assisted Living concept for the seamless and natural access to those services indicated above, and others that may be created later.
The psychological challenge to create pleasant and easy- to- use integrated solutions, i.e. the Ambient Assisted Living Environment that motivates elderly people to adapt their lifestyle, improve their quality of life and reduce dependency.
The economical/political challenge to demonstrate that the solutions are affordable for elderly citizens living anywhere in Europe, that the solutions are cost-effective and produce tangible benefits for all, and that the AAL concept is practical and sustainable.

In the PERSONA project these four challenges will be addressed in one integrated project.

Click the picture to the right for a video interview about the project on the PERSONA home page:

The PERSONA technical platform will exploit and incorporate a broad range of relevant technologies which are developed and integrated in the project: AAL system reference architecture, micro- and nano-electronics, embedded systems (e.g. as in smart textiles), Human Machine Interfaces (display technologies, natural language communication), communication (e.g. body area network, wireless sensor networks), software, web & network technologies (e.g. tele-services), biosensors (to measure physiological data), embedded and distributed sensors (to observe activity patterns, nutrition, gait, sleep), energy generation and control technologies (energy harvesting), and intelligent software tools for decision support.

Project partners

Vodafon Omnitel (Italy)is coordinator of the project. The other project partners are

in Norway: Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine (Norway),
in Denmark: the Danish Center for Health-Telematics (Medcom), Odense Municipal Government,
in Germany: Future Camp GmbH, Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics (FhG-IGD),Motorola GmbH Physical Realization Research Center-Europe,
in Greece: ANCO S.A. Agencies, Commerce & Industry, SPIRIT,
in Italy: R&S INFO srl, RATIO CONSULTA SpA, Interdipartimental Research Centre "E. Piaggio" Faculty of Engineering, University of Pisa , Mountain Community of Taro and Ceno Valleys (CMV), CNR Institute of Information Science and Technologies (CNR-ISTI),
in Spain: The Institute for the Applications of Advanced Information and Communication Technologies (ITACA), Politecnic University of Madrid (UPM), Institute of Textile Technology (AITEX, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Vodafone Spain Foundation (FVE) andDíaz-Bastien & Truan Lawyers (DBT)

Financing

Total project budget equals €11.629.000 and is 50 % co-funded by the European Commission, more specifically within the thematic area ‘Information Society Technologies’ of 6th Framework Program (FP6-IST).

Project period

January 1, 2007 - June 30, 2010

Contact person

Within NST more information can be given by Ms Siri Bjørvig, telephone number (+47) 971 64 725 and email siri.bjorvig@telemed.no

More information on the project

For more information please consult the project’s website www.aal-persona.org

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