Technology, Platforms, Standards, Interoperability

As a multidisciplinary technological approach, AAL involves (too) many different standards at diverse Ievels of hardware, software ( architectures and interfaces ), processes and services, data and content, etc. Considering that even simple sensors and actuators from a single domain are not interoperable by themselves, it should be obvious that complexity increases dramatically when several different domains, such as health, well-being, comfort, entertainment, safety and security, home automation, and energy efficiency, are considered in a combined way for creating AAL applications and services. Hence, the AAL Forum 2010 organised Track F on "Technology, Platforms, Standards, lnteroperability" to investigate two closely-related questions: the role of standards and platforms in coping with the challenge of interoperability in AAL as weil as the obstacles to their wider adoption by technology providers. Since neither the creation of the AAL platforms nor the development of related standards is in the focus of the AAL Joint Programme per se, it was expected that this track would play a bridging role between AAL JP on the one side, and the more longterm industrial activities towards standards as well as the strategic research on AAL platforms in the context of the Framework Programmes of the European Commission on the other. Consequently, Track F was organised in four preparatory sessions for looking at the standardisation and platform scene and collecting views on obstacles and possible strategies for overcoming them. In a fifth session, this track finished its work by a panel discussion for summing up the collected information and making recomrnendations to the AAL comrnunity and its Joint Programme. The following is a summary of these five sessions.