The SILENSE project will focus on using smart acoustic technologies and ultrasound in particular for Human Machine- and Machine to Machine Interfaces. Acoustic technologies have the main advantage of a much simpler, smaller, cheaper and easier to integrate transducer. The ambition of this project is to develop and improve acoustic technologies beyond state-of-the-art and extend its application beyond the mobile domain to Smart Home & Buildings and Automotive domains. In this project, it will be proven that acoustics can be used as a touchless activation and control mechanism, by improvement or development of different smart acoustic technology blocks (hardware, software and system level) and integrate these blocks at system level. At technology level, the SILENSE project will: - Adapt and improve cost, performance, directivity and power consumption of (MEMS) acoustic transducers (incl. testing and qualification) - Heterogeneously integrate arrays of acoustic transducers with other electronics, using advanced (3D) packaging concepts - Develop smart algorithms for acoustical sensing, localization and communication - Combine voice and gesture control by means of the same transducer(s) At application level the SILENSE project will: - Apply acoustical sensing for touchless activation/control of mobile devices, wearables and, more in general, IoT nodes. The project links to Smart Systems Integration (B4), and refers also to application application-related topics, such as Smart Mobility and Smart Society. The application scope of the developed technologies is broader and comprises more societal domains, such as smart home/buildings, smart factories (i.e. Smart Production) and even Smart Health. Furthermore, a clear cross reference with Semiconductor Process, Equipment and Materials (B1) is established in view of the heterogeneous integration of technology blocks. Conventional silicon technologies will be combined with printed (flexible, large area electronics).

Baby Beat represents our innovative response to the declining birthrate, increasing pregnancy risks and risks related to the generally higher age of pregnant women. It consists of a bracelet with integrated non-invasive technology that continuously measures the fetal heartbeat 24 hours, 7 days a week from around Week 20 of the pregnancy. This wearable device communicates with smart phones via Bluetooth and generates automatic alarms when the fetal heartbeat exceeds specific thresholds. The main innovations are that this method is non-invasive unlike all other devices available on the market and that it will be available at an attainable price of a few hundred euros. The overall objective of Phase II is to miniaturize the existing prototype, to test and demonstrate its usefulness on a larger group of pregnant women in clinical trials, and to obtain the necessary certifications for Baby Beat to become a medical device. The market size for Baby Beat is promising when considering the number of pregnancies per year, following the trends of the prenatal retail market and considering the boom of non-invasive prenatal tests. There are 23 million pregnancies in the developed world itself. We will follow a two-tiered business model with direct sales through pharmacies and indirect sales through insurance companies, hospitals and clinics. This will allow us to boost our company growth and to create a significant amount of new jobs. With our medical device and software, we foster the prevention of prenatal problems, and facilitate the provision of personalized care: high risk cases do not remain undiscovered, risk patients only proceed with visits if Baby Beat indicates a need, risk patients do not need to be hospitalized and different agents of the healthcare system will better coordinated.

VIZTA project, coordinated by ST Micrelectronics, aims at developing innovative technologies in the field of optical sensors and laser sources for short to long-range 3D-imaging and to demonstrate their value in several key applications including automotive, security, smart buildings, mobile robotics for smart cities, and industry4.0. The key differentiating 12-inch Silicon sensing technologies developed during VIZTA are: • Innovative SPAD and lock-in pixel for Time of Flight architecture sensors • Unprecedent and cost-effective NIR and RGB-Z filters on-chip solutions • complex RGB+Z pixel architectures for multimodal 2D/3D imaging For short-range sensors : advanced VCSEL sources including wafer-level GaAs optics and associated high speed driver These developed differentiating technologies allows the development and validation of innovative 3D imaging sensors products with the following highly integrated prototypes demonstrators: • High resolution (>77 000 points) time-of-flight ranging sensor module with integrated VCSEL, drivers, filters and optics. • Very High resolution (VGA min) depth camera sensor with integrated filters and optics For Medium and Long range sensing, VIZTA also adresses new LiDAR systems with dedicated sources, optics and sensors Technology developments of sensors and emitters are carried out by leading semiconductor product suppliers (ST Microelectronics, Philips, III-V Lab) with the support of equipment suppliers (Amat, Semilab) and CEA Leti RTO. VIZTA project also include the developement of 6 demonstrators for key applications including automotive, security, smart buildings, mobile robotics for smart cities, and industry4.0 with a good mix of industrial and academic partners (Ibeo, Veoneer, Ficosa, Beamagine, IEE, DFKI, UPC, Idemia, CEA-List, ISD, BCB, IDE, Eurecat). VIZTA consortium brings together 23 partners from 9 countries in Europe: France, Germany, Spain, Greece, Luxembourg, Latvia, Sweden, Hungary, and United Kingdom.