Microsoft and MIT Turn Skin Tattoos into Touchpads
MIT PhD students and a team from Microsoft Research have developed a new system called DuoSkin – a kind of 'smart' tattoo capable of turning your skin into an interface to control your mobile device.
Wouldn’t you like to have a wearable device that enables you to control your phone, a wearable that doesn’t happen to be a smartwatch or a band that you have no interest in wearing?
If yes, then you should hope that this latest research project from the folks at MIT and Microsoft Research eventually sees the light of day.
A team of PhD students from MIT and researchers from Microsoft came together to create a temporary tattoo which works as a touchpad and enables wearers to remotely send data and control their phone over near-field communication (NFC).
They have not yet explained the technology in detail but they will be doing that at a symposium for wearable devices in September.
The technology itself is called DuoSkin.
They did reveal that it works by designing a circuit using graphics software, stamping the tattoo in gold leaf as it’s conducive to electricity and then applying other materials and components that make the tattoo interactive.
DuoSkin Fabrication Process
DuoSkin’s three-step workflow. Step 1: (a) Sketching skin circuitry with graphic design software. Step 2: (b) Fabrication, which includes (c) creating stencils of the circuitry, (d) applying gold leaf as the conductive material, and (e) mounting electronics. Step 3: (f) After completing the circuitry, we apply the DuoSkin device to the user’s skin through water-transfer.
Use cases for this technology include turning the skin into a trackpad, designing it to change color based on temperature as well as pull in data from a tattoo. In one instance even LED lights could be incorporated in the tattoo.
Controlling your phone will be one of the basic advantages of this technology but the possibilities are endless. It can be used to do so much more than just control smartphones, and perhaps in the future, we will find out if the technology is ever going to make its way to the general public.
Source: Ubergizmo
Related: Wearable Technology in the Warehouse
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