Your Body: A DigitalTattoo That’s Bloodless

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tattooSome people’s genius is just frightening…

Engineer Jim Mielke's invention, as demonstrated at a Greener Gadgets Design Competition, is a wireless blood-fueled display subcutaneously implanted. A touch-screen operates as a cell phone display (with the potential for 3G video calls that are visible just underneath 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 told press. When the call ends, the tattoo disappears.

The 2x4-inch "Digital Tattoo Interface" Bluetooth device (made of thin, flexible silicon and silicone) is inserted through a small incision as a tightly rolled tube, and then it unfolds underneath the skin to skin and muscle.

Via the same incision, two small tubes allow blood to flow to a coin-sized blood fuel cell and it converts glucose and oxygen into electricity. After blood flows in (from an artery) to the fuel cell, it flows out again (via the vein).
 
On both surfaces of the display (top and bottom) is a matching matrix of field-producing pixels. The top enables touch-screen control through the skin. Instead of ink, the display uses tiny microscopic spheres, similar to tattoo ink (the spheres changes their color from clear to black, as aligned with the matrix fields).

The “tattoo” communicates like any other Bluetooth device. Tthe display can be turned off and on by pushing a small dot on the skin. But unlike battery-powered devices… this device is the ultimate green concept and is always on as long as your blood flows.

Fortunately, as an engineer, Jim has no plans for commercialization.