The DALi project has undertaken a challenging agenda aimed at extending the people autonomous life beyond the home. The environment where the system operates is partially known (due to its large variability) and changing. Our assisted living device system must therefore acquire dynamic information about the user’s immediate environment in order to guide its decision-making. The construction of a system of such complexity represents a major scientific and technological effort bringing together expertise across different disciplines. We can coarsely identify three principal areas where the effort of DALi’s research team has introduced innovation.