German researchers developing patches that turn skin into touchscreen, iSkin allows users to answer a phone call or adjust volume on music player.
The world is becoming awash with wearable tech, from the Apple Watch to the soon-to-be relaunched Google Glass.
But a group of German researchers wants to take this a step further by turning the human body itself into a touchscreen.
Called iSkin, the technology is a concept for touch-sensitive stickers that apply directly to human skin, effectively removing the limitations of tiny screens or clunky headsets.
iSkin turns the human body into a touch interface (pictured). Users of iSkin can design their own stickers on a computer beforehand so that they can be in control of how they look, similar to designing a tattoo
The concept is being developed by computer scientists from Saarbrücken in collaboration with researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in the US.
Their electrically conductive stickers turn the skin itself into a touch surface, allowing users to answer a phone call or adjust the volume on a music player by stroking themselves.
‘The stickers allow us to enlarge the input space accessible to the user as they can be attached practically anywhere on the body,’ said Martin Weigel, a PhD student in the team led by Jürgen Steimle at the Cluster of Excellence at Saarland University.
