The Development rate for any country is showcased by its emerging Youth population, but the development can also be seen as how the country treats its Elderly population. The increasing aging population is a major issue across the world. Many researches are going on to create an Assisted Living Environment for the elderly population. Although the majority population in our country is young however we cannot deny the fact that an increasing number of Elderly people are taking shelter at old age homes or staying alone with a caregiver taking care of them. The problem faced by the elderly people even in doing their daily chores is a sad story by itself. The increasing aging population will result in many challenges for society and the health care system.

1. Increase in diseases: There will be an increase in age related disease such as Alzheimer and Parkinson's disease for which currently there is no cure.

2. Rise in health care cost: Rise in aging population will also see a rise in health care cost hence the current model of health care will be strained as the aging population increases.

3. Shortage of caregivers: The shortage of professional caregivers will result family members taking care of the elderly. This will result in emotional distress and physical health problems.

4. Dependency: Rising aging population will also result in more individuals unable to live independently. As the population ages the question arises how we are going to pay for the quality care for the elderly.

The Solution to all the above problems lies in the various innovations taking place in the Assisted Living Environment field. In recent years, researchers have developed various assistive technologies based on a new paradigm called Ambient Intelligence. Ambient Intelligence is aimed at empowering people's capabilities by the means of digital environment which are sensitive, adaptive and responsive to people's needs. Assisted Living technologies which are based on Ambient Intelligence are called Ambient assisted living (AAL) tools.

The various AAL tools whose prototype models have made are:

Smart Home

A Smart Home is a regular home, which is augmented with various types of sensors and actuators. Various types of sensors such as RFID, sensitive tiles and Magnetic switches are employed in the smart home to provide an assisted living for the elderly. The sensors are used for health monitoring, fall detection and abnormal behavior detection.

Mobile and Wearable Sensors

Today most smart phones are equipped with various sensors such as accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity sensor and GPS. These are used to monitor the activity and the mobility of the user. Researchers have already developed non-invasive sensors which users could wear as a wrist watch, belt or a jacket. These sensors monitor blood pressure, sugar level and heart beat. These types of sensors employ techniques such as infrared sensing, optical sensing, and Oscillometric. The only disadvantage of these type of sensors is that if users forget to wear it or sensors become faulty it will be of no use.

Camera based techniques

The most widespread use of camera based techniques is Assisted Living Environment is Fall Detection. Elderly people living in an old age home or living independently have no major problem; Fall. Once an elderly person falls, he/she is unable to get up on their own. This results in major Physical-psychological consequences. Research is going on a Camera based fall detection technique in which falls will be detected and alerted via a camera. The basic principle behind this technique is that the Video feed is captured from the camera installed in a ceiling in the room of the elderly person. This video feed is carefully analyzed by techniques such as background subtraction, edge detection and feature extraction. Using these techniques a threshold is calculated if any event crosses the threshold it is determined as a fall event.

Assisted Living Environment is a fast growing field of research and technologies are being developed to provide an easier and comfortable life for the elderly. Many prototypes have been developed in the western countries. Aging in Place an initiative in the USA is aimed to provide assisted living Environment using AAL tools for the elderly. In developing countries, Assisted Living Environment research is going at a steady but slow pace. More time and money should be invested to provide better retirement life for senior citizens as they help in shaping the future of a country.