As the European population ages, more support is needed with fewer hands to cater for their needs. There is a huge market potential for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions, but adoption is limited because they require significant resources for implementation. To address this, universAAL will produce an open platform that provides a standardized approach making it technically feasible and economically viable to develop AAL solutions. The platform will be produced by a mixture of new development and consolidation of state-of-the-art results from existing initiatives. We recognize that this not only poses technical challenges but also raises issues of adoption and uptake. So work on establishing and running a sustainable community will achieve attention right from the start, with promotion of existing results gradually evolving into promotion of the universAAL platform, as it develops into one consolidated, validated and standardized European open AAL platform.

The platform will provide runtime support for the execution of AAL applications in accordance with a reference architecture, development support through core AAL services and an online developer depot of various development resources. It will provide community support, including an online uStore providing a one-stop-shop for AAL services and other resources. The general public will browse the uStore to find what they need; developers will use it as the one marketplace where they make their services available. The consortium is built of major industrial and research players in the field, including key participants from earlier projects. universAAL results will be standardized in European (CEN) and international (OMG, Continua) standardization bodies. We will work to build a community of European industry interested in keeping the universAAL platform alive after project completion.