A team of researchers from MIT found itself quite fascinated towards wearable devices but needed to create a more efficient wearable device. Hsin-Liu Kao, Andres Calvo, and Chris Schmandt found that manufacturing process for wearable devices was quite costly and materials used in it are also quite exclusive that came mostly from material science and medical companies. Their prime goal was to build durable and skin-friendly interfaces that can be placed over skin and can be availed by anyone.
They team started working in association with Asta Roseway and Christian Holz who hailed from Microsoft Research team. Finally, they came up with a complete range of devices that used a gold leaf as a fundamental element. DuoSkin has the ability to get attached to your skin directly, it is very very thin and has proven to be a magnificent material for prototyping of ideas that can be used for commercially available materials.
The team finally came up with three distinct classes of DuoSkin. The first application happens to be a kind of input device and a few skin designs that look more like buttons, trackpads, or slides. The capacitance of touch of a user over the sensors embedded in your skin the second application is related to the output, this DuoSkin can also be used as a soft display mechanism that uses heating and thermochromic elements. The pigments that were to be used for displays were certified and available for utilization in toys and foods already. The team adds that DuoSkin prefers appearance over resolution. It looks more like body art that glows like a LED in dark. Both, the output and input devices need to be connected to a microcontroller and the most preferred one presently is the Arduino Mini, a lithium based polymer battery.
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