Tech

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

Aditya Tiwari
August 13, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YK1QRPNfe0

Short Bytes: MIT has done it again. This time, they have made tattoos that can interact with your smartphone and store your business card. It is known as DuoSkin and made using thin gold metal leaves which help in keeping the costs down.

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.

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We believe that in the future, on-skin electronics will no longer be black-boxed and mystified; instead, they will converge towards the user friendliness, extensibility, and aesthetics of body decorations, forming a DuoSkin integrated to the extent that it has seemingly disappeared.

— DuoSkin via TechCrunch

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Aditya Tiwari

Aditya likes to cover topics related to Microsoft, Windows 10, Apple Watch, and interesting gadgets. But when he is not working, you can find him binge-watching random videos on YouTube (after he has wasted an hour on Netflix trying to find a good show). Reach out at [email protected]