Web4me - User Centric Infrastructure for Ambient Assisted Living

Inhalt:
Although sufficient hardware and software is available on the market to support ambient assisted living, advanced base services like Internet Phone, collaboration, home automation, home care assistance are actually not used in daily life. The complexity and diversity of user interfaces, both technical and organisational, prevents acceptance of services especially by “technology illiterates” and elderly users. The interface chaos increases also to the cost of services and their associated support infrastructure for service providers. An unified collaboration networked portal infrastructure is proposed which can easily be customized for target audiences and services. A wide range of interface devices e.g. TV Controller, Mobile Phone, Home Controller or special devices for handicapped people can be used to interface with the infrastructure. All interfaces are accessible also via browser based web interfaces allowing on line peer to peer assistance, education and maintenance. The implementation of a private portal network based on a home portal and hosted portal network using commercially available components is described and demonstrated. Improvements in technology, trusted service organisation and legal environment are discussed which are required to support user centric ambient assisted living.