DuoSkin: MIT Creates “Touch Screen Tattoos” Using Gold Leaves

Tattoos can be used to control your smartphone–sounds futuristic? But it’s not. MIT has just created a tattoo that is more useful than enhancing your beauty and being your style statement. Known as DuoSkin, the new development is a temporary tattoo that is made using golden leaf-based thin circuits which can be worn on the skin.

These designer tattoos can be made in three options, as an input to control other devices like smartphones, as an output device to display information like changing color by sensing skin temperature, and as a storage. You can store your business details on the DuoSkin gold leaf tattoo and share it with other people using the NFC technology.

The tattoo is an outcome of the research “DuoSkin: Rapidly Prototyping On-Skin User Interfaces Using Skin-Friendly Materials”. It is being carried out at the MIT Media Lab in collaboration with Microsoft Research.

The design and the circuits in involved are first made using computer graphics software and then a vinyl cutter is used to cut the gold leaf. The researchers have made sincere efforts to keep the technology cost effective so that it could be catered to the masses and may end up gaining popularity at the tattoo parlors.

— DuoSkin via TechCrunch

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