Quickly Getting Yourself Into a Sticky Situation

From time to time people stop and reflect on the fantastic advancements that have been made in the world of computing over the past several decades, perhaps expressing amazement that we all carry a supercomputer in our pocket these days. And it is incredible to think that the tiny smartphones we carry around with us pack more computing power than was even imaginable in the room-sized computers of the past. But where do we go from here? A new, improved camera every year? Boring! Where are the game-changing technological breakthroughs? Some people believe that the next frontier may be in wearable, on-skin computing devices. This sort of device can offer entirely new ways to transparently augment our lives.

Computing technology has been dramatically miniaturized to the point where these types of devices are possible — ample processing power and memory can fit on a tiny chip, and these processing units require very little energy to operate. But there is a dearth of standardized toolkits available to assist developers in creating on-skin wearables, making the barrier to entry in this field very high in terms of cost and required technical expertise. A team from Cornell University has developed a versatile, wearable on-skin computing platform that is designed to help get prototypes off the ground quickly. It is a modular system of flexible skin patches with standardized connectors that each have their own preprogrammed computing module.

The plug-and-play system is fabricated with temporary tattoo paper, silicone textile stabilizer, and water to create a flexible, soft film structure that can attach to the skin. The patches can be cut to any arbitrary size and have male-female cutting lines along the edges so that modules can easily be connected to one another. To make prototyping easy, the artificial skin was designed to be durable enough to be repeatedly attached to and detached from the body. Computing resources and sensors are added to each module via a flexible printed circuit board. Arranging a set of modules with different functionalities can quickly create a device prototype with complex capabilities.

To confirm that SkinKit worked as expected for real users, a small study was conducted with nine participants with STEM and design backgrounds. They were asked to design and build devices during a 90 minute workshop, and the input from these participants was used to further refine the system. Then a larger study, with 25 participants was conducted over a two day period. Over the short course of the study, the participants created devices related to health and wellness, personal safety, and assistive technology. One of the devices was a wrist-worn band that would vibrate when a visually impaired individual was about to bump into an object. Not bad for a grand total of two days to come up to speed, design, and build a device.

The team has been working with middle school students to teach them about device design with their SkinKit platform. They see their system as an important way to get more people interested in STEM, aside from their initial goal of building a rapid prototyping platform. Looking down the road, they also see applications in areas as diverse as art and fashion.