Listen2Future will boost the potential of piezoelectric acoustic transducers to provide new solutions in the key application areas of Health & Wellbeing and Digital Industry & Energy. Acoustic transducer solutions and the key underlying technologies are addressing many of the challenges in emerging applications towards a more digitalized society. Indeed, growing demand for MEMS-based acoustic transducers (microphones, ultrasonic transducers) in medical and industrial devices are creating a new high demand for miniaturized low power sensors. In combination with an intelligent signal processing system, algorithms and customized packaging, these technologies will be the key to achieve performant, low power consuming, miniaturized and cost-saving systems. The demonstrators will address 14 use-cases in LISTEN2FUTURE with their benchmark in low power consumption, small size and low cost to open the door for disruptive acoustic applications. Major impact on quality of live for humans as well as on industrial and medical appliances can be expected. The European Position in Acoustic Sensors will be therefore strengthened by new piezoelectric materials and technologies with the capability to outperform the existing ones that are based on capacitive MEMS technologies. This will contribute to reinforcing the Union's strategic autonomy in electronic components and systems to support future needs of vertical industries and the economy at large. The growth of the microphone market (8 -> 14bio. units in 5 years) and the growth of the Ultrasound sensing modules market (500mio -> 800mio in 3 years) should be predominantly covered with acoustic sensors made in Europe. The double transition of European Union toward digital and greener society there poses a high demand for reliable and secure data. Our integral acoustic sensor solutions are listening to these needs and mapping the acoustic senses and perceptions into Society 5.0.

Smart device manufacturers require constant innovation in order to improve their products while simultaneously reducing costs. Hardware-based solutions are expensive, requiring dedicated sensors and long deployment times to fully integrate them into devices, since they must be manually tuned and calibrated for each new type of application. This makes it difficult to customise such devices for different market segments and end-user needs. Furthermore, extra hardware requirements often compromise a device’s design, increasing their bulk and rendering them old-fashioned. Many hardware-based solutions also increase the risk to a user’s privacy and data security, such as those solutions involving cameras. As a result, manufacturers are adopting software-only solutions instead of hardware. However, they do not yet have a presence detection or gesture recognition solution ready for mass commercialization. Elliptic Labs is the world leader in ultrasound sensing software for smart devices, enabling touchless interactions and gesture interpretation. INNER MAGIC and INNER REFLECTION (IMIR products) are the first-of-their-kind integrated solutions for non-intrusive user presence detection and intuitive gesture recognition, transforming smart devices into genius devices. The aim of the IMIR-UP Phase 2 project is to fully mature our award-winning and patented technology for easy, mass-scale (“plug-n-play”) deployment in any consumer electronic smart device without requiring supplemental hardware (software only). Bringing our innovative IMIR products to the mass market will positively disrupt existing touchless sensing technologies, resulting in an improved user ability to intuitively interact with their smart devices via a natural extension of normal human behaviour. We estimate that we will reach 651.21m smart devices (just 2.87% of our TAM) after the first 5 years of commercialisation, representing accumulated revenues and gross profits of €195.36m and €105.15m, respectively.

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).