The advent of technological novelties into modern homes has enabled the provision of assistive technology based products and services that promote safe and protective living environment, for vulnerable groups such as elderly. Within this context, the objective of this paper is to report the progress made by the Complete Ambient Assisted Living eXperiment (CAALYX) European Union-funded project.

Assistive technology is becoming increasingly popular among both the elderly and health care providers due to its unobtrusive nature and potential cost effectiveness. CAALYX goes beyond the current assistive technologies that are limited to the user’s home, by proposing an additional mobile solution. This is in response to an increasingly mobile elderly population, a demographic group that wishes to remain autonomous and independent, yet is vulnerable enough to still require the attention of care givers.

This paper describes the main components of CAALYX that deliver a complete service enabling location awareness, 24/7 clinical and wellbeing monitoring of the elderly and timely response when needed. These components include a Home System, a Caretaker’s System, and a Mobile System. The latter is composed of a mobile computer-phone and a Wearable Light Device (WLD) that bundles a number of sensors amongst which is a robust Fall Detection Sensor developed by the project. The challenges faced by the project consortium in developing this functionality in a successful product prototype are also discussed.