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Science Technology

'Electronic Skin' Grafts Gadgets To Body 31

Posted by Soulskill from the mail-us-a-sase-to-receive-your-free-slashtoo dept.
sciencehabit writes "Researchers have developed ultrathin electronics that can be placed on the skin as easily as a temporary tattoo (abstract). The scientists hope the new devices will pave the way for sensors that monitor heart and brain activity without bulky equipment, or perhaps computers that operate via the subtlest voice commands or body movement. The devices can even be hidden under actual temporary tattoos to keep the electronics concealed, giving them potential applications for espionage."
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'Electronic Skin' Grafts Gadgets To Body More

'Electronic Skin' Grafts Gadgets To Body

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  • Could this do rudimentary computer-brain interfaces without implants?
    • It might be an improvement over the present in terms of the skin-contact portion of the apparatus; but doing a computer-brain interface without drilling holes in the skull and getting direct contact imposes some fairly annoying constraints:

      The electrical activity of the brain is certainly externally detectable; but it isn't terribly strong, and you have to deal with EMI and scalp muscle activity and such. Only gives you a comparatively rough, aggregate sense of what the brain is up to, and the further fr
    • Yeah, one of the example applications that was mentioned is EEG, which means it could be used for some really crude BCI (think emotiv epoq).

  • Police: Look! he has a tattoo. It could be camera. Get him!

    -----

    Drug lords: Yeah, I got soma that. Shit you got one of those bug-tattoos. Kill the motha!

  • Can see the headline now: Police amputate protester, lays charges of carrying concealed recording device.

  • inb4 Borg/ you will be assimilated jokes. Seriously, will this allow me to back up my brain and use Google desktop search for all the nude girl pictures I have stored therein? Or better yet, retrieve all those fun childhood memories that my age addled brain has stored away....somewhere.
  • But implants would be more practical, no?
  • "It would appear you are attempting to graft electronic skin onto my endoskeletal structure."

  • From the abstract:

    Solar cells and wireless coils provide options for power supply.

    If you have to have a bulky power source, it's hardly very practical. Don't misunderstand though, I think it's pretty cool. Are the solar cells actually the circuit? Would it be possible to get enough voltage from the skin?

    I wonder what kind of microphone they used and how they attached it to the circuit. And how did they monitor heart-rate?

    • And how did they monitor heart-rate?

      Probably the same way they do it with pacemakers. See, they use a shrink ray on a police officer and inject him into your heart. Then he sits there with his radar gun and clocks the speed of the blood cells racing by. If they start going too fast or too slow, he takes out his taser and shocks your heart a little to get it back into a normal rythm.

      Seriously, I thought this was common knowledge by now.

  • If they could make a timepiece, i'd wear one. who needs straps!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Briareos ( 21163 ) *

      I'd already be happy if they could just make a digital watch that isn't at least a centimeter in height because of battery + display + assorted other crap... :(

  • This is a godsend for those people with chronic condition that requires constant and somewhat intrusive monitoring, such as users of insulin pump that needs to know what their glucose reading pretty much as often as possible. That's one of the possible use for this technology.

  • We can now graft lasers onto shark's heads!
  • to call it the mark of the beast?
    • The book of revelations already happened. It was written cryptically to keep the Romans from figuring out that "Babylon" was Rome, and was written during a time when Christianity was considered a weird, dangerous cut.

      The mark of the beast was Caesar's head on coins, which you needed to buy or sell things.
  • It looks pretty similar to what was depicted in Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Saga#Man-machine_symbiosis). Namely - OCTattoos. The difference is that in the book they were worn not only for practical reasons but also as an adjournment. Still waiting for wormholes though...
  • ... for the Arduino crowd. Now your Lilypad [arduino.cc] will be able to tell you whether you're pregnant or not.

  • the old green lantern villain the tattooed man.

  • This is guaranteed to have many applications from the useful to the beautiful to the absurd. Combine this with recent research on direct neuro-electronic interfaces (see for example multiple papers at link below) and you now have interesting possibilities for sending and receiving signals to/from devices on the skin -- or across the room. Directly stimulating cells in the skin responsible for detecting pressure, heat and so forth might enable more compelling virtual or augmented realities. Combine with

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