The PETRA Conference brings together different types of technology to address an important social and healthcare issue: as the world's population ages, there is growing interest in solutions for the in- home care of the elderly as well as for the care of people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other disabilities or traumas. PETRA (which means "stone" in Greek) reflects the needs of the domestic environment, or "Oikos" as it was known in ancient Greece, but from a technological perspective. People's living environments are particularly important in an increasingly crowded and complex world where the need for inclusiveness and connectivity with the rest of the world is key. PETRA addresses the fact that, as people grow older, they will increasingly rely on technology to be able to stay in their homes.

Topics and areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Tools, infrastructures, architectures and techniques for designing, implementing and deploying pervasive applications in assistive environments
* Privacy, security and trust
* Social impact of the use of pervasive technologies on the user in pervasive assistive environments
* Wearable, ambient and home based health and wellness measurement and monitoring technologies
* Mobile and wireless technologies for healthcare information storage, transmission, processing, and feedback
* Sensor networks for pervasive care
* Standards and interoperability
* Probes for gathering requirements in household settings
* Context aware mobile networks
* Signal and Image Processing for Ambient Intelligence and Pervasive Computing
* Reasoning systems and Machine Learning for Assistive Environments
* Usability and HCI issues, Multimodal Interfaces