For some reason in our dreams about future societies, along with hovercrafts, laser guns, and a truly heinous amount of chrome for no apparent reason, privacy has almost always been abandoned for convenience. People have chips in their heads or barcodes on their wrists, something that not only allows them to complete most mundane tasks without moving, but also makes literally all of the information about them immediately available—probably for population control by a corrupt government. Since wearable tech has turned into something of an art form nowadays, we’ve already seen variations of electronic tattoos, but until today nobody had managed to actually print one onto human skin.
You may remember the Rogers Research Group from the stretchable batteries and stick-on electronic tattoos they’ve created in the past, both inventions that represented a new age for wearable technology. Now, this University of Illinois group has created the very first electronic sensor that can be printed directly onto human skin.
Their new electronic tattoos have done away with the polymer backing of their previous e-stickers, which allowed them to be easily washed off when showering. The new tattoos are 1/30th the thickness of the stickers, and conform more naturally to the natural ridges of human skin, both factors that bettered their performance. The new “tattoos” are capable of measuring skin hydration levels, body temperature and the electric signals of your muscles and brain activity.
Sadly, the Rogers Research Group’s newest product is still not as durable as a real tattoo—it washes off in around two weeks thanks to our skin’s exfoliation process, despite the team’s effort to prolong the sensor’s life by using a spray-on bandage. In order to avoid this fatal flaw, the sensor would have to be embedded beneath the surface layer of skin in the same way as real tattoo.
Considering how fast this team got from stickers to a product they can print right onto your skin, I would say electronic tattoos are not far off. Whether those up and coming tattoos will lead to a future where every scrap of data about ourselves is collected into a barcode we use for absolutely everything under the tyrannical rule of cyborgs or a corrupt government (or corrupt government cyborgs), well. Anything’s possible, but let’s not get paranoid.
Source Discovery News
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