Tool Time Tuesday: These Metallic Tattoos Turn Wearable Tech into a Second Skin

We're in an exciting era of technology that is providing us with tiny devices that allow us to do just about everything, from reading emails to checking our heart rate. Getting us even closer to that cyborg state is a wearable that looks like a fashionable tattoo.

A collaboration between MIT and Microsoft research, the DuoSkin will turn your tattoo into a connected device that controls your smartphone or computer. MIT Media Lab PhD student, Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, was inspired by the street style in Taiwan, where people "very easy change and edit your appearance whenever you want," she says in an MIT video.

The wearable itself is made of gold metal leaf, which is cheap, strong and safe for the skin. DuoSkin has three interfaces - traditional buttons trackpads and sliders that can control your external devices. The tattoo will also change colour depending on your body's temperature, and they can store data since they use NFC to communicate.

Kao hopes to get the technology into tattoo parlours so people can start getting inked with the smart wearables.