Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. News

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

These flash tattoos aren’t just pretty — they can control your phone too

By
DuoSkin:Functional, stylish on-skin user interfaces
There’s both form and function built into these new flash tattoos from the MIT Media Lab. Ushering in a new generation of wearables that behave almost like a second skin, the new DuoSkin from MIT and Microsoft Research takes temporary tattoos and turns them into connected devices. So now, controlling your smartphone or computer is as easy as tapping your tattoo.
Recommended Videos

Inspired by the trendy flash tattoos that are frequently seen adorning the the wrists and forearms of fashionistas everywhere, Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, a PhD student at the Media Lab, decided to inject some innovation into these aesthetics. In Taiwan, she explains in an MIT video, there exists a “huge culture” of cosmetics and street fashion, which allows individuals to “very easily change and edit your appearance whenever you want.” DuoSkin, then, simply takes this to the next level.

Related

Described as a “fabrication process that enables anyone to create customized functional devices that can be attached directly on their skin,” DuoSkin uses “gold metal leaf, a material that is cheap, skin-friendly, and robust for everyday wear” for three different kinds of on-skin interfaces. For starters, these connected tattoos can take the form of “on-skin input elements that resemble traditional user interfaces, such as buttons, sliders, and 2D trackpads.” That means that DuoSkin turns your body’s surface into a trackpad or a virtual control knob that could adjust, say, the volume of your iPhone.

Furthermore, “DuoSkin brings soft displays onto the skin, enabled through the ink-like qualities of thermochromic pigments.” That means that if your body temperature goes up or down, these tattoos can change color. And finally, DuoSkin devices are capable of communicating via NFC, which means they can store data that can later be read by a smartphone or another NFC-enabled device.

The end goal, Kao said, would be to get the DuoSkin technology into tattoo parlors so that the general public could start getting inked with … well, electronics. After all, why wear something when you can just have it tatted on, right?

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Lulu Chang
Lulu Chang
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
The tech to fully charge your phone in just 20 minutes is here
oppo reno ace battery charge hands on features price photos release date charger

Got 20 minutes to spare? Great, because that’s how long it takes for Oppo’s new battery-charging tech to take a 4,000mAh battery from flat to full. Perhaps you have even less time and only need a little bit of power? That’s fine too, because the same tech will deliver a 41% charge in just 5 minutes. It’s seriously impressive, given most of the fastest charging phones you can buy today still take an hour to reach 100%.

Oppo’s 125W flash charge technology is an evolution of its already pretty damn speedy Super VOOC tech, which we’ve seen return impressive times in the past. With such a massive amount of power flowing into your phone, Oppo has wisely given the safety side a significant upgrade too. There are 10 extra temperature sensors to make sure safe limits are not exceeded, and special fuse overvoltage protection too.

Read more
Uncanny Face ID mask can deter the spread of germs, but won’t unlock your phone
Face ID Masks

It’s a tale as old as internet time. A joke goes viral, and ends up becoming real. This time around, San Francisco-based artist Danielle Baskin told the internet she was going to start printing medical masks with the lower half of people’s faces printed on them in order to “protect from viral epidemics and still unlock your phone.” The Internet, fearful of coronavirus, wanted them.

https://twitter.com/djbaskin/status/1228798382598000640

Read more
Robots aren’t coming to steal your job. They’re coming to improve it
dont fear the robot automation threat overblown bmw arm

For many people, the word “automation” conjures up dystopian scenes of humans versus machines. A future in which people set aside our differences to oppose the sleek, metallic products of our own engineering. Few but growth-minded business types get a warm-and-fuzzy feeling of optimism when the word “automation” comes up. And for good reason.

There’s virtually no job that won’t be touched by artificial intelligence (A.I.) and robotics. According to a recent Ball State study, robots and A.I. accounted for around 87 percent of job loss in the United States between 2000 and 2010. PricewaterhouseCoopers recently estimated that 38 percent of American jobs may be at risk by the 2030s. And in 2016, a 55-page report titled from the Executive Office of the President painted a similarly dire picture, warning that millions of workers may be displaced.

Read more