Alfred: a virtual assistant helping older people stay active

Senior citizens often need support to live independently and actively participate in their communities. The EU-funded Alfred project came up with a Personal Interactive Assistant to help the elderly overcome the obstacles preventing them from carrying out everyday tasks. The project created a virtual'butler' to which people can talk, ask questions or give commands, and developed systems to encourage older people to socialise by suggesting and managing events, to monitor their state of health, and to help them stay physically and mentally active via personalised games. It produced 25 apps, both for immediate use and to inspire developers interested in designing new services that target the needs of senior citizens. The Alfred project brought together expertise and technology from a range of different areas: ubiquitous computing, big data, gaming, the semantic web, cyber physical systems, the internet of things, the internet of services, and human-computer interaction.