DuoSkin: Gold and silver tattoo that can control your smartphone

We all know about wearable techs like fitness trackers, smart watches that add to our human capabilities by just wearing a band around our hand or leg. Moving forward, we now have a tattoo that can function as an interface for smartphones and other digital devices. This tattoo, powered by a lithium polymer battery can receive and send information, serving as a wearable device that adds a personal touch of style.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Microsoft have demonstrated technology called DuoSkin that affixes gold leaf patterns to a person’s skin, creating a computer circuit. You put it in the same way you would a normal temporary tattoo: it’s as simple as that.

While it is not the first time that ways to create on-skin interfaces have been developed, the researchers say their “DuoSkin” system is cheaper, more comfortable and more attractive than other inventions such as copper tape. The gold leaf circuit connects to a small chip which is able to wirelessly beam a Bluetooth signal to a device, in the same way that a smartwatch or remote control does now.

The concept comes from Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao — a Ph.D. student at the MIT Media Lab — that grew out of an internship at Microsoft Research last summer. Kao has envisioned an end of the one-size-fits-all world of wearables; one where everyone uses nearly identical smartphones or smartwatches.

There are three potential functions for the new tech- as a trackpad for your device; as an output device that displays information such as a person’s body temperature or their mood and thirdly a communication device, using NFC to share data.

The tattoo is made up of adhesive tattoo paper, an insulation layer, gold leaf — the kind often found in picture frames and chocolates — and a silicon overlay. Kao says it cost less than $175 to build the working prototype. Making such a device has become affordable as computer components are becoming smaller, cheaper and more powerful.

According to the researchers, “we believe that skin serves as the bridge between the physical and digital realms, enabling users to leverage the personal aesthetic principle that is often missing in today’s wearable tech”.

The invention taps into a growing trend for temporary metallic tattoos as a fashion statement and Kao says people will soon be able to walk into tattoo parlors and have a connected tattoo fitted onto their skin.