*** Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this Call ***
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Call For workshop participation
"Support for companies developing Ambient Assisted Living solutions,
to achieve the market breakthrough"
organised by theEuropean Commission <http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/einclusion/events/aal_market/index_en.htm> and the AAL Open AssociationAALOA <http://www.aaloa.org/news/amb11>
and supported by theAAL Association <http://www.aal-europe.eu/>
Albert Borschette Conference Centre, Rue Froissart 36, 1040 Brussels, Belgium
07 June, 2011
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/einclusion/events/aal_market/index_en.htm
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This invitation is directed at companies whose business involves the
development of software components or complete solutions for AAL
(Ambient Assisted Living). The participation of SMEs is particularly
welcome.
The goals of the workshop are to:
*
Indentify technical areas where -- in the view of the participants
-- provision of common approaches or technical solutions would
lead to faster, cheaper or more flexible product development.
*
Provide information about on-going activities in this area
supported by the European Commission and AALA
*
Discuss the form and content of possible new funding measures from
the European Commission and AALA aimed at involving companies in
practical experimentation with new technologies currently under
development, and offering them the opportunity to influence this
work to match their needs.
The underlying motivation for the workshop is the potential for
significant economic and social impact from the introduction -- on a
wide scale -- of innovative AAL solutions. While this potential has been
recognized for some time, breakthroughs in terms of widespread
availability and deployment of solutions have yet to be achieved. The EU
and AALA have funded activities in this area for some years, and some of
these are now at a stage in their development where direct hands-on
involvement of development companies is the best way to make sure that
this work produces results that are effective and applicable in real
industrial settings.
The workshop is organised by AALOA and European Commission --
eInclusion, and supported by AALA:
*AAL Open Association -- AALOA* is serving as an open meeting point
for various projects, individuals, and organizations to form an AAL
community with broad involvement from all types of stakeholders like
technology providers, service providers and research institutions
involved in AAL. AALOA is intended as an invitation to join the
mission of bringing together the resources, tools and people
involved in AAL within a single forum, making it much easier to
reach conclusions on provisions needed to design, develop, evaluate
and standardize an open common service platform for AAL.
*European Commission -- eInclusion:* Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT) play an essential role in supporting daily life
in today's digital society. They are used at work, to stay in touch
with family, to deal with public services as well as to take part in
culture, entertainment, leisure and political dialogues. The
Commission proposes a series of measures to promote take-up of
digital technologies by potentially disadvantaged groups, such as
elderly, less-literate, and low-income persons. Improving access for
people with disabilities as well as tackling demographic ageing with
the help of ICT for a better quality of life for the elderly,
reduced cost of care, and business opportunities in the "silver
economy" are important parts of the eInclusion agenda.
*AAL Association -- AALA:* The AAL Association is an international
not-for-profit association with the involvement of many EU member
states that implements the Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme.
Its objective is to enhance the quality of life of older people and
strengthen the industrial base in Europe through the use of ICT. The
motivation of the new funding activity is in the demographic change
and ageing in Europe, which implies not only challenges but also
opportunities for the citizens, the social and healthcare systems as
well as industry and the European market.
As a first approach to achieve the market breakthrough, the goal of the
planned workshop is to involve the industry in _new funded projects_
where their products can be _ported to a promising platform solution_
from international research projects and be integrated in AAL
environments with minimal integration efforts. The AAL community is
invited to _nominate_ existing and emerging platforms with suitable IPRs
(that allow their usage in the new projects) as candidates to serve as
porting target in such projects. The funding should mainly aim at
mitigating adaptation costs for the participating vendors. The following
benefits are then expected to be achieved:
*
The industry and research are supposed to get closer to each
other, bridging the gap between the AAL research achievements and
the industrial AAL products and services.
*
The vendors of the AAL products and services will be able to adopt
selected technologies from the latest research results and, if the
whole target platform proves to be very promising, will benefit
from being among its early adopters.
*
The candidate platforms will be provided with the most effective
feedback loop for taking corrective actions and will have the
opportunity to deliver the evidence for the practicality of their
provisions.
*
The funding authorities (eInclusion and AALA) benefit from the
overall effect of getting closer to the AAL market breakthrough
and can show the usefulness of all the previous investments in AAL.
*
As, according to its manifesto, AALOA wants to "Design, develop,
evaluate, standardize and maintain a common service platform for
AAL", such porting projects will provide the AALOA community with
indicators for creating consensus around a shared platform.
In order to guarantee the existence of at least one candidate platform
as porting target, eInclusion recommends the AAL platform being
assembled within the FP7 project called universAAL [4]
<http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/einclusion/events/aal_market/index_en.htm#uaal>,
which is supposed to consolidate the results of the eInclusion previous
investments in AAL towards an open cross-application platform. The goal
of eInclusion in funding universAAL was to prevent the legacy of the
previous investments from dying out; such legacy should be reused
efficiently towards converging conclusions. Also due to the usage of
permissive open source licenses by universAAL, the platform should be a
serious candidate for porting projects. This, however, should be
examined in the workshop as appropriate.
The preliminary scheme of the workshop program is as follows (the final
programme will be published by the end of May 2011):
1.
Opening by the organizers (ca. 15 minutes)
2.
Up to 10 very short presentations by technology and service
providers on the AAL market obstacles (ca. 60 minutes)
3.
Three short presentations by the candidate platforms (ca. 45 minutes)
4.
Up to three short presentations on funding possibilities for
porting projects by FP7, AAL JP, and CIP ICT PSP (ca. 45 minutes)
5.
Guided discussions on the targeted funding scheme and concluding
the recommendations (ca. 2.5 hours)
6.
Closing with a sort of protocol (ca. 15 minutes)
AALOA plans to organize further workshops directed at AAL market
breakthrough and will invite the community in due time to participate in
the discussions about the possible topics for them.
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[1] The Ambient Assisted Living Open Association <http://www.aaloa.org>.
[2] Short for the ICT for Inclusion
<http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/einclusion> sector of the DG
for Information Society and Media
<http://ec.europa.eu/information_society> of the European Commission.
[3] The Ambient Assisted Living Association.
<http://www.aal-europe.eu/aal-association>
[4] Short for UNIVERsal open platform and reference Specification for
Ambient Assisted Living <http://www.universaal.org> under the grant
agreement no. 247950.
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Workshop: 07 June, 2011
Albert Borschette Conference Centre,
Rue Froissart 36, 1040 Brussels, Belgium
Link to the workshop webpage at theEuropean Commission <http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/einclusion/events/aal_market/index_en.htm>
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--
Dr. Reiner Wichert
Head of Fraunhofer-Allianz Ambient Assisted Living
Department Head Interactive Multimedia Appliances
Fraunhofer-Institut für Graphische Datenverarbeitung IGD
Fraunhoferstrasse 5 | 64283 Darmstadt | Germany
Telefon +49 6151 155-574 | Fax +49 6151 155-480
[log in to unmask]
www.aal.fraunhofer.de | www.igd.fraunhofer.de
See you at:
http://www.ami-11.org/
|
