How can we help improving the driver’s control of silent vehicles? How can we alert pedestrians to potential dangers caused by silent vehicles? My pen knows the graphical quality of my gesture; how can it give me the related feedback? These questions, which at first glance might seem dissociated, arise from a general problem that aims at defining the best strategy to inform people on the temporal evolutions of a dynamic system (here the vehicle or the writing gesture) within a specific cognitive context (in the situation of pedestrians, conductors or writers). The sound represents an incontestable sensory modality to address such questions. In fact, sounds are intrinsically linked to time and therefore perfectly adapted to the expression of dynamic characteristics. Moreover, sounds bring additional information about things that are outside our field of view in a natural way, hence revealing the invisible. The “MetaSound” project proposes a genuine investigation of fundamental questions for an optimal use of sounds in the context of augmented reality by the means of two problems that are both rich and challenging because of the imposed constraints and the industrial and societal consequences that they induce: - Which sounds for tomorrow’s cars? The purpose of this task is to prepare for the acoustic rupture linked to novel traction chains (hybrid/electrical) and to propose sounds adapted to the expectancies, the security and environmental constraints to improve the control of the vehicle (interior car sounds) and to protect the vulnerable persons (exterior sounds). - Which sounds for a sensory feedback linked to writing gestures? Dysgraphic disorders are most often linked to a lack of coherency between the writing gesture and the graphical task. The sound, because of its dynamic inherency and its lucidity, is an appealing modality to sonify the gesture and hereby help children overcome their handicap by improving their dynamic trajectories when writing. The scientific milestones of the MetaSound project are based on three fundamental questions: - What should be sonified? (the input variables of the system and their associated rules) - Why sonify? (the cognitive context and the sensory expectancies) - How to sonify? (the genesis of sound metaphors) To exhaustively treat these questions, a strong multi-disciplinary interaction is needed. The consortium gathered around the MetaSound project unites the necessary competences, hereby enabling a formal and original approach to the problem by taking into account human factors and by using a genuine language of sounds constructed thanks to the ductility of digital synthesis and the semiotics of sounds. The project is divided in six strongly interacting tasks, which susceptibly will lead to theoretical, technical and applied advancements. In addition to the coordination task, two main tasks concern the applications of the project and will be validated by the realization of a sonified, rolling prototype (car application) and a prototype to assist dysgraphic persons. Two more fundamental tasks will establish original models and methods to characterize the dynamic contents of the sound signals and their reproduction by synthesis. They will allow the construction of sound metaphors and the conception of high-level control processes that act on attributes linked to sensations. The last task is strongly technological, since it concerns the realization of a real-time synthesis platform of spatialized sounds controlled by external variables and specific cognitive scenarios to the intended applications. It will constitute a very general tool disposed for dissemination in any community linked to augmented reality and applications to interactive sounds (cinema, video games, …).

PLANISSIMO is an industrial research project whose objective is to mature fundamental concepts, based on plasmonic nanostructures, into a specific device, including fabrication technology, compatible with industrial application. PLANISSIMO scientific aim is to demonstrate the realization of planar, focusing and semi-reflecting lens or mirror based on plasmonic nanostructures, and to propose one or several technological processes to allow for nanostructuration at macroscopic scale. The industrial objective is to concurrence, thanks to a miniaturization technological breakthrough, optical systems currently embedded in vehicles. Several solutions can be envisaged to exploit properties of localized surface plasmon metallic nanostructures. Array of nanoparticles, arranged on a glass substrate, can induce a straight reflectivity spectrum peak centered at a wavelength depending on their shape, size and spacing. Focusing effect can then be obtained thanks to nanoparticle periodic or aperiodic positioning on the surface, like metamaterials, and by substrate optical properties modification (index gradient induced by implantation or etching). The project is built in order to theoretically and experimentally evaluate on small samples (typically 200x200µm²) different structure geometries, following required characteristics, and to propose technological scaling solutions for large samples (several cm²). The consortium is made of three partners: PSA will be in charge of quantified required characteristic delivery, taking into account needs and market, of device final characterization and of results valorization and exploitation; Institut Fresnel will realize the most of theoretical and design work, by progressively increasing complexity in home-made simulation tools, taking into account reflectivity, non-specular reflection and focusing effects. These design aspects will be developed in strong collaboration with IEF, also project manager, which will contribute to a part of simulation, and will be in charge of fabrication and small sample characterization. Iteratively, an optimized structure will be defined before to explore fabrication scaling (especially with “nanoimprint”), and to deliver large (1cm²) sample to PSA. Besides, data for fabrication strategy analysis will be collected, and possibly experimented, in order to propose one or several macroscopic scale nanofabrication processes for future industrial exploitation. In addition to usual scientific results communication, two original actions will be developed within the project: (1) interest of plasmonic structures for practical application will be evidenced to visitors at PSA thanks to a dedicated demonstrator bench developed within PLANISSIMO; (2) two partners of the project are involved in a formation “chair” including topics around plasmonics, which could favour transmission of the results and promotion of the field towards students. This four years industrial research project is thus very ambitious and will contribute to technological transfer of an emerging nanotechnological research field toward industry.

Musicians adapt their gestures according to the sounds they produce on their instrument, but would they be able to learn such expert gestures without such a coherent, auditory feedback? This question, which illustrates the relation between movements and sounds, reveals the potential interest in sonification as a tool to learn and guide silent gestures. In fact, the sound-gesture adjunction should enable a precise and efficient control of so far unreferenced dynamic gestures, thanks to the high temporal and spatial precision that sounds can offer. The SoniMove project focuses on the contribution of calibrated sounds to control functional gestures attached to new Human-Machine Interfaces (HMI) for cars and to expert gestures specific to sport and music. It is based on the natural tendency of our cognitive system to try to identify the sources that produce the sounds we hear and to precisely identify the dynamic relations (time and space) between sounds and movements. In addition, this project aims at reducing the cognitive load in the visual modality by providing information through sounds. This is of particular interest when proposing new HMIs for cars, since the visual modality should in this case be devoted to driving for security reasons. Hence, this project has the ambition to provide important innovations in terms of industrial and societal results by focusing on the dynamic and interactive information that merely sounds can offer, and that makes it possible to radically reconsider the interaction between audionumerical technologies, new HMIs and human expert movements (sport and music). The SoniMove project is destined to industrial and societal applications, but it also raises a number of fundamental questions linked to the influence of sounds on human beings. More precisely, it questions how an intimate manipulation of sounds, based on invariant sound morphologies that transmit specific information, can not only inform, but also guide or modify the human motor behavior in a given cognitive context. To answer these fundamental questions and adapt them to industrial applications, we will adopt a theoretical viewpoint in accordance with recent paradigms within the domain of cognitive neuroscience based on the properties of the perception-action loop, that we will evaluate in interactive protocols (enactive loop) by taking into account multimodal processes of integration (sound, vision, movement). The Sonimove project is naturally organized along 3 intimately linked tasks. These 3 tasks respectively address 1/ fundamental questions linked to sound morphologies and 3D auditive immersion, 2/ fundamental questions linked to sound/movement relations related to the adjustment of motor behavior, 3/ and finally their industrial and societal applications geared to the sonification of new Human/Machine interfaces and to the learning of expert gestures for sport and music through sounds. To treat all these questions, the SoniMove project unites the necessary expertise in the domains of analysis-synthesis of sounds, sonification, perception of sounds, cognitive science, movement science and human machine interfaces within an interdisciplinary environment that favors the development of enactive and multimodal approaches. It is founded on a collaboration between three partners: two academic laboratories with expert knowledge in the domains of acoustics (Laboratory of Mechanics and Acoustics, LMA, Marseille) and movement science (Institute of Movement Science, ISM, Marseille) and an industrial partner that is strongly involved in innovative research and development (Society Peugeot-Citroën Automobiles, PSA).

In Europe, the estimated population suffering from hearing impairment is as large as 16%. Hearing impairment may be related to their age (presbyacousis), to excessive exposure to loud sounds (this is true for more and more young people) or to other reasons. In France, hearing aids are not widely used, as they are negatively perceived to be related to some disability (on the contrary to eye glasses) and remain too expensive. The individual fitting of these hearing aids is difficult and, quite often, people do not use them as they find them uncomfortable and not as efficient as expected. In the meantime, sound interactions increase in cars, and many of these sounds involve speech communication. Such interactions can be related to safety (driving aid device), functionality (GPS system) or comfort (telephone or radio). In the case of hand-free phone, many people experience a poor intelligibility and the attentional load required to focus on conversation might become dangerous. For such hearing impaired people, the only way they can try to improve the ease of hearing is to increase sound level, which is uncomfortable and non optimal, given their hearing abilities. This project is dedicated to provide new tools to improve speech messages intelligibility in a noisy environment, by giving to the listener an easy-to-use device which would allow him to find the optimum set-up by his own. This user layer will hide sophisticated speech signal processings that will be adapted in real time according to the noise situation and the speech signal to improve. The targeted application field will be the car industry, for three reasons : - car buyers are significantly older (50 years old) than the average population; - speech sounds are more and more used in a car for communication purpose; - noise is constantly varying in the cabin. To achieve this goal, the consortium is made of four partners : - Telecom ParisTech will develop signal processing algorithms in order to improve speech intelligibility in noise. Some algorithms will reinforce the speech without modifying any important speaker feature, some other ones will use more important modifications (as an example, by slightly modifying formant places). - PSA Peugeot Citroën will use MAX/MSP real time platform to develop man-machine interfaces. These interfaces will be used for subjective experiments and for conceiving prototypes at the end of the project. - INSA-Lyon (Laboratoire Vibrations Acoustique) will evaluate the efficiency of algorithms and interfaces, as regard to speech intelligibility and quality. - The Lyon Neuroscience Research Center will develop a system allowing to simulate various hearing impairments in real time. This system will be useful in the following to conduct easy-to-use experiments, without selecting participants with a targeted hearing impairment. Also, it is worth to be mentioned that an association of audioprothesists (Association Française des Audioprothésistes Indépendants) will be associated to the project, as a sub-contractor of one partner. The input from this association will be a strong knowledge of hearing impairement and fitting procedures. This will be useful to the consortium within all the project (developing the device and testing it at the end on a population of hearing impaired listeners). Moreover, recycling the choices the patient made when using the device, could help the audioprostesist for the set-up of hearing aids parameters. The project is structured by six tasks. One for each of the four above-cited partners and two additional ones: one will be devoted to evaluate the importance of each kind of hearing impairment in the population and to select some targeted population and the second is the managing of the overall project.

The reduction of energy losses, damage to surfaces and the emission of pollutants are locks for lubrication technology, particularly in the field of transport. To deal with pollution standards even more stringent (EURO 5 by 2012) and the specifications and requirements of manufacturers who still evolving in the direction of increased severity, an adaptation of the tribological system is necessary. To meet all these requirements, a new solution of rupture is considered: the coupling of a functional carbon coating and a Low SAPS lubricant (lubricant low sulphated ash, phosphorus and sulfur) optimized for this type of coating. The originality of this project is based on the holistic approach to the problem dealing with both the nature of the surfaces in contact and lubrication additives. This new system will be introduced in the Segment-Piston-Cylinder (SPC) zone of the engine. This has never been treated with this type of material due to extremely severe thermal conditions. The development of coatings and nanocrystalline diamond coatings DLC (Diamond-Like-Carbon) with gradient properties for segmentation engine on the one hand, and the formulation of a new Low SAPS lubricant with high compatibility with the types of materials are two axes of the innovative project. The research project ECOLUB based on a perfectly complementary close partnership between PSA, TOTAL, HEF, LSA and the LTDS. In order to master this new technology, it has become necessary to achieve the synergy of all the players on these topics: - SAP will bring its knowledge of materials, solicitations engines and numerical simulations. In particular, the engine tests developed in a previous thesis allow sampling of used oil in actual use and during operation, - TOTAL bring his knowledge of Additivation oil and skills in physical and chemical characterization of lubricants, - HEF R & D work to the development and manufacture of surface coatings DLC appropriate to the study and their tribological characterization under high contact pressure, - The ISA will provide its expertise in molecular analysis of extreme surface (ToF-SIMS), - The LTDS tribological provide expertise and skills in experimental simulation of the mechanisms of lubrication and its experience in the development process of nanocrystalline diamond coatings.