The next generation of wearable technology will stick to your skin and you won’t have to remember to put it on every morning. Chaotic Moon, an Austin-based tech design firm, is experimenting with conductive paint and electronic components, including LED lights, to build skin-mounted gadgets that could be used to monitor vital signs or hold credit card information. Chaotic Moon’s Tech Tats, as it calls them, stick on and wash off like a temporary tattoo. That means that they would be relatively cheap. The devices are still in development, but the company told Techcrunch that it’s in talks with several groups to market them. Other groups are developing similar tattooed technology, Engadget reports. Motorola has filed a patent for a microphone tattoo that would be imprinted on your throat. At University of California, San Diego, researchers created a adhesive tattoo that monitors exercise and generates power from sweat. Parents could slap one on their kids at the first sign of illness to monitor their temperature and hydration levels, or ahead of attending a crowded event to track them down if they get lost. The military could use them to monitor soldiers’ health or determine if they have been hurt. Eric Schneider, creative technologist at Chaotic Moon even claims that, like traditional tattoos, tech tats could look good—if you like the cyborg look.
"Wearable tattoos" could be the next evolution of IoT connectivity, allowing users to receive designs that communicate via conductive ink and electronic components, but wash off easily, just like a temporary tattoo, the "biowearable" device could even generate power from sweat. Developed by Texas-based Chaotic Moon, the biowearables are at the functioning prototype stage, and the company is looking to explore use-cases. Currently, the team is pursuing military and healthcare applications for the technology, but is also interested in retail uses, for instance, to allow parents to locate their children in public, or tracking air quality in large cities. The Bionic Tattoo project was funded through an Indiegogo campaign launched last year, with more than $120,000 raised so far.