The future of Ambient Assisted Living: The openURC Alliance participates in the international workshop “A European Platform for AAL applications”

The openURC Alliance will be joining the euro ssc 2010, the 5th European Conference on Smart  Sensing and Context on November 16th, 2010, in Passau, Germany, to coordinate work on  personalized and accessible user interfaces with the other Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) activities.  The MonAMI workshop event is focused on discussing and shaping a future AAL platform as a  Europe wide standard. AAL is characterized by the use of technology and innovation to support people in their daily lives.  This is possible due to the development of state-of-the-art services and solutions that are provided  by the AAL research community in cooperation with companies that develop innovative products   for this emerging market. openURC’s technology has been adopted by the MonAMI project and integrated successfully as  core building block, enhancing the platform with regard to the provision of personalized and  pluggable user interfaces. MonAMI is the example of a project that integrates mainstreaming  services and sensor systems in a common architecture. The openURC Alliance will contribute to panels in the workshop “Platforms for AAL applications” (http://www.esl.fim.uni-passau.de/eurossc2010/page10/page10.html) discussing issues like “Which Features should be in AAL Platforms” and “What’s the way forward?”. The openURC Alliance will be represented in this event by Dr. Jan Alexandersson, Head of AAL  Competence Center DFKI GmbH, Germany, and Prof. Dr. Gottfried Zimmermann, University of Tübingen. „I am pleased the URC has grown momentum in Europe and is moving from research into commercial applications. I am looking forward to the continued application of URC to help facilitate personal and accessible user interfaces in AAL.“ Gregg Vanderheiden (Trace) “We are pleased to have the OpenURC Alliance contributing to the MonAMI workshop.” Gunnar Fagerberg (for MonAMI) “Beginning with the i2home project, URC technology has become a fundamental pillar for our work within the DFKI Competence Center for Ambient Assisted Living. Perhaps even more importantly, URC has been selected by twenty additional European R&D projects. Building an international alliance around URC is a natural next step and will provide a platform for all AAL stakeholders to meet and shape the future of AAL.” Jan Alexandersson (for DFKI)   About openURC Alliance: The mission of the openURC Alliance is to promote the Universal Remote Console (URC) technology and associated standards, such as ISO/IEC 24752. openURC fosters application of the  URC technology in products, facilitating user interfaces that are simple and intuitive to use. This  includes current and future technologies such as Task Models, advanced User Profiling, Natural  Language and Brain Computer Interaction. The openURC Alliance was founded in 2010 by the Trace Center, DFKI, Access Technologies  Group, Meticube, dot UI, VICOMTech, Czech Technical University and Georgia Tech University.  The Alliance is currently preparing the establishment of an international legal body that will be  constituted in March 2011. By the end of the 3rd quarter of 2010, the total in R&TD as well as product development projects involving the URC standards and openURC members has grown to more than 75 M€, involving  more than 100 R&TD institutions and companies that are applying URC concepts and technologies  in domains like e-Inclusion, Ambient Assisted Living, e-Health, Home Automation & Control, Telecommunications, Energy, Mobility, Automotive, Social Networks, Content and Media Management and Public Transport. Contacts: Prof. Dr. Gregg Vanderheiden, gv@trace.wisc.edu Dr. Jan Alexandersson, janal@dfki.de Prof. Dr. Gottfried Zimmermann, gottfried.zimmermann@uni-tuebingen.de Jürgen Bund, juergen.bund@meticube.com