Jim Mielke's wireless blood-fueled display is a true merging of technology and body art. At the recent Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the engineer demonstrated a subcutaneously implanted touch-screen that operates as a cell phone display, with the potential for 3G video calls that are visible just underneath the skin.
The basis of the 2x4-inch "Digital Tattoo Interface" is a Bluetooth device made of thin, flexible silicon and silicone. It´s inserted through a small incision as a tightly rolled tube, and then it unfurls beneath the skin to align between skin and muscle. Through the same incision, two small tubes on the device are attached to an artery and a vein to allow the blood to flow to a coin-sized blood fuel cell that converts glucose and oxygen to electricity. After blood flows in from the artery to the fuel cell, it flows out again through the vein.
On both the top and bottom surfaces of the display is a matching matrix of field-producing pixels. The top surface also enables touch-screen control through the skin. Instead of ink, the display uses tiny microscopic spheres, somewhat similar to tattoo ink. A field-sensitive material in the spheres changes their color from clear to black, aligned with the matrix fields.
The tattoo display communicates wirelessly to other Bluetooth devices - both in the outside world and within the same body. Although the device is always on (as long as your blood´s flowing), the display can be turned off and on by pushing a small dot on the skin. When the phone rings, for example, an individual turns the display on, and "the tattoo comes to life as a digital video of the caller," Mielke explains. When the call ends, the tattoo disappears.
Could such an invasive device have harmful biological effects? Actually, the device could offer health benefits. That´s because it also continually monitors for many blood disorders, alerting the person of a health problem.
The tattoo display is still just a concept, with no word on plans for commercialization.
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That's kind fucking awesome. And kinda fucking creappy at the same time. It's wierd enough seeing people with bluetooth headsets "talking" to themselves. Now we'll have people making cell phone calls outta their arm pits.
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It´s inserted through a small incision as a tightly rolled tube, and then it unfurls beneath the skin to align between skin and muscle.
[...]
On both the top and bottom surfaces of the display is a matching matrix of field-producing pixels. The top surface also enables touch-screen control through the skin. Instead of ink, the display uses tiny microscopic spheres, somewhat similar to tattoo ink. A field-sensitive material in the spheres changes their color from clear to black, aligned with the matrix fields.
How can you see the display through a full thickness of skin?
At the same time, my forearms got real fucking tingly when I read how this thing leeches your blood sugar to run its power cell!
I know it's irrational and all, but this device does creep me out. I had enough trouble with one of those hospital IV ports they put into your arm so that they don't have to keep changing needles constantly. This one would be completely unbearable for me. Ugh.
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Winston Blake wrote:
How can you see the display through a full thickness of skin?
Ever seen a person with a tattoo? Should work the same way for the same reason, the top layer of human skin has little pigment in it
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Something about that just gives me the heebie-jeebies. I suppose it would mean the end of losing my phone all the time though. Did they say how you're meant to hear the other person? Jawbone implants too perhaps?
It can't be that hard to build in a small headphone jack port to the flesh and seal it. Easiest way.
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Street sam here we come, hopefully no one has a fear of losing some essence ratings. All jokings aside while this is a pretty cool idea, imagine some of the industrial espionage and spy agencies uses for the thing. Most people have no need for stuff like it.
Ohh possible idea, diabetics and others with medical probems could easyily have a medical sensor with this implanted to keep track of problems and also so that paramedics and doctors can also see.
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Because it has tubes attached to blood vessels, I'd be a bit worried about clotting around the tubes leading to a health problem.
That said, with it being a bluetooth device, you can imagine some interesting uses for it. Have the blood monitor scan for alcohol and a bluetooth device in the ignition of a car could cut out if you get behind the wheel with a BAC above N-value.
General Zod wrote:
Bluetooth headsets. Since, you know, it communicates with bluetooth devices.
That said, where do I get one?
Better yet, a codec device in the inner ear with a sub-vocalising implant near the trachea. You can hear the conversation and you alone, while also talking without making any sound. Next best thing to a fully neural link-up.
I love the comments about the dangers of the device radiating nasty radiation of SEVERAL Watts. I sure hope these people have never set outside when that big fusing ball of gas is in the sky.
Last edited by Admiral Valdemar on 2008-02-27 02:21pm, edited 1 time in total.
Only thing that looks worrisome to me is the fact that it has to be connected to a vein and an artery to function. How secure are those connections? If I trip and fall and hit my arm, will I bleed out internally?
I've always wanted a blood sugar fuel cell, one with an external output jack, so I can power my gadgets with it. I wonder if a large enough fuel cell could be used for weight / blood sugar control?
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If we have devices that can generate electrical power from blood sugar, does that mean we can hook fat people up to generators and solve the energy crisis and obesity epidemic in one fell swoop?
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Drooling Iguana wrote:If we have devices that can generate electrical power from blood sugar, does that mean we can hook fat people up to generators and solve the energy crisis and obesity epidemic in one fell swoop?
hmm... Animated and interactive tattoos would be quite cool.
And they wouldn't be permanent which is also a plus.
It's just gonna suck if the phone companies sell your arm as ad space, or if some virus is programmed that spreads and displays something you don't want.
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Winston Blake wrote:
How can you see the display through a full thickness of skin?
Ever seen a person with a tattoo? Should work the same way for the same reason, the top layer of human skin has little pigment in it
Have you ever seen a diagram of skin? Tattoos stain the dermis, this is stated as lying between the skin and the muscle. Even if it could be seen through the whole dermis, there's a layer of fat underneath that before you hit muscle.
