DALIA

The DALIA Personal Virtual Assistant will be created mainly for smart phones and Smart-TVs based on Android, chosen due to its wide deployment and open platform. For proper usage, the end-users need a suitable smart phone; for usage at home a Wi-Fi connection is sufficient, whereas for outside usage a data flat rate contract is recommended. The smartphone integrated sensors will be used for the measurement of health parameters. The base for the PVA will be ANNE, an avatar developed by consortium member Virtask which has already included speech- and face- recognition. The DALIA project will integrate its components in a service-oriented architecture, which allows for functionality decomposition, easy integration of new services, and reuse of already existing services in different applications. Two prototypes including user evaluation will ensure a solution tailor made for the targeted end-users. Evaluation will involve a group of 20 to 30 yet-fit-enough 60+ people provided by the end-user partners.

Objectives

DALIA (Assistant for Daily Life Activities at Home) will provide an integrated home system that supports older adults as primary end-users, offers support to their informal carers as secondary end-users, and can be extended to interface with services of formal care and medical services. DALIA will hide the technical complexities of the DALIA platform behind a Personal Virtual Assistant (PVA), a human-looking avatar endowed with speech recognition and speech capabilities. Both the older adults and their informal carers will be able to interact through the PVA user interface with the DALIA platform – and are intended to grow the PVA as their “best friend at home”.

Expected results and impact

DALIA supports elder people in every situation of their lives and will break the barrier between elder people and new technology. By the use of common technology the costs can be reduced enormous. The old person can talk to the avatar and DALIA can access different sensors to tell the result to the customer to help them, thereby elder people get more independent. Informal carers have access to the same avatar, which can tell them what they have to do in different situations or just to talk with the person cared for. DALIA will revolutionise the way clients interact with the virtual world by bringing together the temporal and spatial distances between elderly and younger relatives, caregivers and other society members.

Partners

Partners involved in the DALIA project

Organization	Type	Country	Website
Exthex GmbH	SME	Austria	www.exthex.com
Virtual Assistant bv	SME	The Netherlands	www.virtask.nl
TP Vision Belgium	Large Industry	Belgium	www.tpvision.com
Graz University of Technology	R&D	Austria	www.iaik.tugraz.at
Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts / iHomeLab	R&D	Switzerland	www.ihomelab.ch
Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences / Institute of Applied Health and Social Sciences	R&D	Austria	www.fh-linz.at
Volkshilfe Steiermark – gemeinnützige Betriebs GmbH	End User	Austria	www.stmk.volkshilfe.at
terzStiftung	End User	Switzerland	www.terzstiftung.ch
Woonzorg- en dienstencentrum´t Dijkhuis	End User	The Netherlands	www.hetdijkhuis.nl
Steftung Hellef Doheem	End User	Luxembourg	www.shd.lu

Project name: Assistant for DAily LIfe Activities at Home
Website: www.dalia-aal.eu
Coordinator: Exthex GmbH (Austria)
Duration: 36 Months
Starting Date: 01.04.2013
Total budget: € 2.840.748
Public contribution: € 1.576.876

Contact

Oliver Bernecker

E.: info@dalia-aal.eu

T.: +43 316 269 898-0