Microsoft Research creates a tattoo that can control your phone
Some Ph.D. students from the Michigan Institute of Technology Media and Research in collaboration with Microsoft have designed the ultimate wearable, DuoSkin. It is a transitory tattoo that allows the users to control their smartphones, share through NFC and much more.
The Lab’s website of MIT reveals the details of this temporary tattoo. Microsoft Research creates a tattoo that can control your phone. This new invention is expected to be showcased at a wearable’s conference at the end of this month. The website states that this tattoo allows people to generate customized functional devices that are directly attached to their skin. A user can put it on their hand and then customize the function as they want.
The gold metal life used by DuoSkin is cheap, doesn’t harm the skin and can survive daily usage. The researchers have displayed three uses of the DuoSkin: registering the touch input, output display, and wireless communication. With the gold-silver color scheme, this on-skin interface looks like a jewelry piece, and there is a necklace style variant which was also showcased by the researcher.
What does this on-skin interface actually do?
The website says that to allows the users to control their mobile phone, shows information, and save the information on their skin while looking like a personal style statement. The researcher has taken a wearable idea to a whole new level and came up with a device that is stylish and rather than being some heavy design, it just sits on the skin.
With this device, they have developed an interface that will reinstate the general trackpads and button sliders. It features row-column scanning in a two-layer assembly that will segregate horizontal outlines from vertical outlines and it also has a 2D touchpad. Using thermochromic pigments, it brings soft display on it. For wireless communications across devices, it uses NFC which is connected to a coil on the tattoo.
Other companies are also working on the idea of wearable on-skin. Apparently, Google is working on smart contact lenses, which possibly will allow the users to discover diabetes.
