Abstract
Ambient assisted living (AAL) has the ambitious goal of improving the quality of life and maintaining independence of older and vulnerable people through the use of technology. Most of the western world will see a very large increase in the number of older people within the next 50 years with limited resources to care for them. AAL is seen as a promising alternative to the current care models and consequently has attracted lots of attention. Recently, a number of researchers have developed solutions based on video cameras and computer vision systems with promising results. However, for the domain to reach maturity, several challenges need to be faced, including the development of systems that are robust in the real-world and are accepted by users, carers and society. In this literature review paper we present a comprehensive survey of the scope of the domain, the existing technical solutions and the challenges to be faced.