The assistant project: Creating a smartphone app to assist older people when travelling by public transport

This is a Position Paper, in the form of a short report on progress of the three-year ASSISTANT project, which is funded jointly by the European Commission's Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme (AAL JP) and the national funding agencies of Austria, Finland, France, Spain and the UK. ASSISTANT's objective is to create a system that older people can use, on a smartphone, to help them to travel independently by public transport, in comfort and with confidence. The target group for the commercial product that will be developed by the project is more mobile older people. However, because the app will be highly personalised, and provide the user with the facility of audible and haptic, as well as visual, feedback, it should also be appropriate for use by people who are partially sighted, people who are hard of hearing, and people who have difficulty with oral communication. This paper describes progress made during the first two and a half years of the project's life, and outlines some of the ways in which the ASSISTANT app will be tailored to meet the needs of a variety of users, in a variety of public transport contexts.