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A temporary tattoo that can control a smartphone? MIT & Microsoft Research show off DuoSkin

Posted at 7:58 AM, Aug 15, 2016
and last updated 2016-08-15 15:34:44-04

Researchers have definitely upped the cool factor when it comes to temporary tattoos.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab worked with Microsoft Research to develop DuoSkin.

Researchers say these temporary tattoos are made of a conductive gold leaf material and small electronic components.

Proving on-skin electronics don’t have to be ugly, the interfaces look like body art.

On MIT’s website, researchers say they were able to develop three classes of the temporary tattoos: input, output and communication. 

The input tattoo acts as a track pad to command your smartphone.

The output tattoo shows displays on your skin depending on your mood or body temperature

The communication tattoo allows you to read information right from your skin thanks to an NFC tag. 

While these are just prototypes, researchers hope in the future, we’ll see tattoos with a number of different functions. They also want them to be easy to make, so anyone could design their own.

Check out more here. 

 

DuoSkin:Functional, stylish on-skin user interfaces from MIT Media Lab on Vimeo.