Body modifications, such as tattoos and piercings, have often signaled membership in a subculture. But what if they actually signaled something, such as smart tattoos that act as interfaces for third-party digital devices?
That’s what Professor Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao is creating in her Hybrid Body Lab at Cornell University, using woven skin, fiber science, and conductible textiles.
Would you merge with a circuit board to become your own LAN or affix a next-gen wearable as a way to silently express your inner emotive state? This is way beyond today’s devices, but anything’s possible, as Dr. Kao told us recently.
“In my PhD thesis at MIT, I identified the sensor device miniaturization and breakthroughs in novel materials which allow for the placement of technology on the body,” Professor Kao says. “But I’m also very interested in exploring how body craft materials, form factors, and application rituals can integrate existing cultural practices with new technological functions.”
Hybrid Body Craft
Professor Kao’s team at Cornell adopts an interdisciplinary approach, blending design, technology, and social science for the development and study of these interfaces. The term “Hybrid Body Craft” is one she coined during her early research on this field.
“I wanted to describe a practice which takes into account culture—existing body decoration practices—and technology—emerging miniaturized electronics and smart materials—as inseparable dimensions of designing on and into the body surface,” Dr. Kao says.
This moves “beyond an engineering-centric perspective to explore on-body design with a greater connection to social contexts and the human experience, towards new possibilities for the expression of self,” she argues.
If that sounds like sci-fi territory, you’re not wrong. The Eslucent project from Dr. Kao and her team looks like Blade Runner’s Voight-Kampff test at first glance.
Street Wear Gets Personal
But for Professor Kao, this is less about Ridley Scott’s magnus opus and more about drawing on her own experience growing up in Taiwan—a country known for its vibrant street fashion culture. On the streets of Taipei, temporary body decorations (nail art, eyelash extensions, hair coloring, makeup stickers) are everywhere, and are used to signal individuality; membership of a movement; or the pure embodiment of playfulness for visual appeal. This is where Dr. Kao got her initial inspiration, but she gave it a cool twist into the tech-enabled sphere.
“The first device I built was a smart nail art sticker that also functioned as a trackpad,” she says. “I then created a series of on-skin interfaces including smart temporary tattoos, color-changing eye shadows, and stiffness changing gels as body armor.”
In recent months, Dr. Kao’s team has expanded their use of materials into weaving textiles, and incorporating tiny printed circuit boards (PCBs) into the on-skin interface itself.
In the project WovenProbe, these techniques allow for more complicated applications, such as a hand gesture tracking interface. Or, as in the WovenSkin concept, a timer/alarm haptic response that encourages cessation of social media obsession (or other non-useful behaviors). The use of weaving has opened up the possibilities enormously, as Professor Kao tells us, and also solves some of the issues inherent in less durable or malleable materials.
“In one of our prior projects, DuoSkin, we’d adopted a film-based approach for soft interfaces, made with flexible materials such as silicone stacked in layers, but it couldn’t withstand regular wear and tear for long periods. In contrast, textile fabrication techniques, such as weaving, provide a sturdy yet thin substrate that can remain unaltered after extended use. Thanks to their yarn-level structure they’re also more appropriate for conforming to the body.”
By transitioning to weaving, the Hybrid Body Lab can incorporate circuitry directly into the textile structure itself, and experiment with a range of materials to create interesting on-skin products.
“In WovenProbe, we took the next step in creating a fully integrated on-skin interface; no external microprocessor or power required,” says Dr. Kao. “We’ve now built a lace-like substrate that is resilient and slim, incorporating seven miniaturized PCB islands and over 20 wires across the limited surface area of the hand for an index-finger and thumb-based inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensing system.
“You can think of it like a hand motion tracking system that, with the right software, can detect micro-gestures such as pinching,” she adds. “We had four IMUs on the tips and ends of the thumb and index finger, which were connected to a microcontroller, energy harvester, and integrated NFC coil.”
The possibilities for non-verbal communication abound. It’s also exciting to imagine interacting with one’s environment without aching (texter) thumbs, carpal tunnel with the never-ending scroll-scroll-scroll of (un)social media, or exhausted eyes from staring at screens.
Democratizing Wearable Tech
This isn’t a far-off future. Dr. Kao is determined that her R&D will soon have a life beyond the lab. “We see it as an important mission to democratize these processes so more people can get involved in designing this future—not just researchers like us in the labs.
“A lot of the fabrication processes we develop eventually become open source and available to the public. It is one of the most exciting things for us when we see other designers, makers, and researchers—and even elementary school students—using our tools and processes to bring their own concepts into reality.”
If you’re an on-body design expert, look out for an open call in early 2022 for an “Artist in Residency” at Professor Kao’s lab, funded by the National Science Foundation.
“We’re going to source applications from a wide variety of creatives, including fashion designers, textiles artists, makeup artists, tattoos artists, and beyond, [and invite] them to come to our lab for a summer residency to design with the technologies we developed,” says Dr. Kao.
“Our goal is to explore pathways for STEM researchers, such as ourselves, and artists, designers, and craftspeople, to collaborate to create a more diverse and inclusive future for wearable technology.” For more information, check out the Hybrid Body Lab site.
