Humans are perpetually worried about robots one day taking over their jobs, but we never thought tattoo artists were in danger. French designers Appropriate Audiences made a custom attachment for a MakerBot 3D printer that turned it into a mechanical tattoo artist.

The group first used the MakerBot to create the attachment that would allow the 3D printer to perform a new trick. They installed, tweaked, and tested the automated tattoo machine. They experimented with skin tension and other variables to be sure that, when the contraption was tried out on a human, it wouldn’t horribly maim or dismember that human.

When the team worked out all of the details, a very brave member of the group stuck his arm into the machine and allowed the modified tattoo gun to permanently imprint his skin. The tattoo was just a simple circle, no doubt due to the newness and untested nature of the contraption. In the future, though, we can definitely imagine more complex tattoos being drawn by machines.

The post Evil Geniuses Turn 3D Printer Into Robotic Tattoo Machine first appeared on Gajitz.

Ask any serious musician and they will tell you that their instrument of choice feels like a natural extension of their own body. For media artist Dmitry Morozov, that is true in a literal sense. He created an instrument that reads a tattoo on his arm as a musical score. Along with a device that mounts onto his arm, the tattoo makes Morozov into a kind of cybernetic musical instrument.

The Tattoo Sound Controller consists of a handle and two rails, along which move sensors. The sensors “read” the black shapes of Morozov’s tattoo and translate them into sounds that remind us of a garbage truck, or perhaps someone hitting piano strings with a wrench.

The tattoo is specifically designed to leave the maximum amount of time between “triggers” so that the instrument is as flexible as possible. The speed, direction, and step length of the sensors can all be adjusted so that, according to Morozov, there are an infinite number of variations on the sounds.

A Wii controller in the handpiece allows Morozov to move his hand in three dimensions and create new and interesting sounds simply by changing up the speed and angle at which the sensors read the tattoo. According to the artist, this creative hybrid of human and machine represents the melding of the artist and his instrument.

The post Cybernetic Instrument Reads Arm Tattoo as Musical Score first appeared on Gajitz.

Who doesn’t love a good temporary tattoo? Even when you’re a grown-up, it’s hard to resist those cute little cartoon characters and know that you don’t have to live with them on your skin for the rest of your life. Tattoos Alive is bringing the temporary tattoo into the digital age by adding a layer of augmented reality.

The tattoos come in six different characters and look just like any other temporary tattoos. After applying to the skin with some water and half a minute or so, the tattoo will look like the perfect temporary skin adornment. But load up the Tattoos Alive app and scan that tattoo, and suddenly you’re wearing an animation.

The app works some kind of magic to make the tattoo come to life on the screen. Whichever character you’ve chosen – the cool sax-playing dude, the guitar-playing turtle or any of the four other designs – does a little dance right there on your screen as if it is standing right on your skin. They’re all adorable, but we’re partial to the robot that does the robot.

The post Impermanent Art: AR Temp Tattoos Shake it On Your Skin first appeared on Gajitz.

Why is this blue guy smiling? Maybe because he’s helping track the health of the person he’s attached to while also making medical research history. Developed by University of Toronto PhD candidate Vinci Hung, the small temporary tattoo is actually a solid-contact ion-selective electrode (ISE) which monitors wearers’ pH changes. The point of the tattoo is to monitor metabolic changes in a non-invasive way through the wearer’s sweat, detecting metabolic disorders or signaling when an athlete is dehydrated during training.

Hung created the tattoo using standard screen printing techniques and regular temporary tattoo transfer paper. It’s totally safe and creates no lasting after-effects for the user. The design itself holds some secrets: the smiley face’s eyes are the sensor’s working and reference electrodes, while the ears are the contacts that a measuring device connects to. The ISE technology is already in use for several applications, but this is the first time it has been embedded into a skin-mounted object that is not dislodged by movement or excessive sweating.

The post Measuring a Body’s Metabolic Stress Through a Temp Tattoo first appeared on Gajitz.

You know that very first tickle in the back of your throat that tells you a cold is coming on? What if you could figure it out even sooner – as soon as the first bacteria took hold? A team at Princeton is developing tooth “tattoos” that could detect illness from the bacteria in your breath, starting before you even realize you’re getting sick.

The tattoos are wireless and powered by resonant coils so there’s no need for charging or batteries. They work with the wonder material graphene, which can grab each individual bacteria and make the sensors amazingly sensitive. Decorative tooth tattoos are already a fashion fad in many parts of the world, so maybe these medical sensors could be incorporated into the more decorative dental decals to create a product that’s functional and fun. But for those of us who choose to keep our tooth tattoos private, the graphene sensors can also be applied painlessly to out-of-sight places in the mouth.

The post Tooth Tattoos Will Know When You’re Sick Before You Do first appeared on Gajitz.