This company is using rub-on tattoos to turn your skin into a touchpad
A company is using temporary tattoos to turn your skin into a touchpad for your computer.
With this bizarre new tech that I’m pretty sure nobody asked for, you can now do away with your keyboard and mouse.
Researchers at Saarland University in Germany have come up with a new way for you to control your device.
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It turns out the future of tech could mean that you use tattoos on your arms to perform different functions on the computer.
As part of the SkinMarks project, a team has designed temporary tattoos that users can stick onto their body and use like a touchpad.
The stick-on tattoos all have integrated sensors which react when pressed - much like a touchpad on a laptop.
When applied to different body parts, such as the knuckles or the side of a finger, the user can trigger these sensors with a touch or swiping motion - think of it as like using an invisible smartphone.
Uploading a video demonstration onto YouTube, the university wrote in the description: “The body provides many recognizable landmarks due to the underlying skeletal structure and variations in skin texture, elasticity, and color.
“The visual and spatial cues of such body landmarks can help in localizing on-body interfaces, guide input on the body, and allow for easy recall of mappings. Our main contributions are SkinMarks, novel skin-worn I/O devices for precisely localized input and output on fine body landmarks. SkinMarks comprise skin electronics on temporary rub-on tattoos.
“They conform to fine wrinkles and are compatible with strongly curved and elastic body locations. We identify five types of body landmarks and demonstrate novel interaction techniques that leverage SkinMarks' unique touch, squeeze and bend sensing with integrated visual output.
“Finally, we detail on the conformality and evaluate sub-millimeter electrodes for touch sensing. Taken together, SkinMarks expands the on-body interaction space to more detailed, highly curved and challenging areas on the body.”
While it’s still in the early stages of the development, the team at SkinMarks hope that this could be the future.
They believe that the tattoos will make human computer interaction much more natural.
Taking to X to share their thoughts, one user wrote: “Great, so don't think I am a weirdo if I keep touching my belly.”
A second joked: “That way, when someone kicks me in the crotch, it'll also ring for an ambulance.”
However, not everyone was impressed. One person posted: “Only sick people will allow this.”
And another added: “Mark of the beast!”