Wear-a-BAN is expected to enable major technological breakthroughs that will generate strong societal impact by increasing the comfort, health and security for a wide category of users in the European population.

Communication between man and machine, also known as Human-Machine-Interface (HMI), could become more intuitive or natural by integrating motional and emotional information, parameters which are difficult to express with standard HMI devices. Indeed, in man to man communication, a large part of the information is transmitted naturally through non-verbal communication (body language, intonations, etc). Such a paradigm shift requires a move from classical computer peripherals towards natural interfaces that mimic the natural human interaction. With recent advances in microelectronics, embedded signal processing and software technologies, more natural HMI solutions are within reach, which will enable new gaming, medical rehabilitation and robotics interfacing paradigms and require very short and intuitive learning curves for anyone.

The kick-off meeting of the Wear-a-BAN project was held on the 23-24th June in Limasol, Cyprus and the project was successfully launched with the active participation of the consortium members.

CSEM has been selected as the Technical Coordinator of the project and will provide an ultra low-power RF system-on-chip based on its icycom technology, with best in class RF power consumption as well as on-chip digital signal processing.

The Wear-a-BAN project is co-funded by the European Commission through the “Research for the benefit of specific groups” instrument in particular for the Associations of Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs). Wear-a-BAN will contribute to enable EC policies such as eHealth for better healthcare in Europe, i2010 for fostering better inclusion of disabled people through ICT, eLearning for speeding up changes in education and training, and EU Health and Safety at work for enabling safer interaction for machine or robot operators.

Wear-a-BAN is expected to enable major technological breakthroughs in the areas of ultra low-power radio system-on-chips and of textile-oriented system-in-package platforms for miniature wearable antennas, wireless and sensor electronics and digital signal processing, resulting in significantly increasing the competitiveness of the Associations and SMEs participating in the project.

The Project Wear-a-Ban has received a grant within the scope of the EU (or EC) managed FP7 Research programme. The project will last for two years and the consortium consists of leading research organizations, universities, Associations of SMEs and SME participants from all over Europe, including the Robotics Society of Finland, Cap Digital Paris Region, Ateval, Playall Management, Ramon Espi S.L., Movea SA, Deltatron Oy, SignalGeneriX Ltd., Voxler, Aitex, CSEM SA, Technical University of Berlin, VTT, CEA-LETI and the coordinator RTD TALOS Ltd.

For further information: www.wearaban.eu.