Watch: What is a Smart Tattoo?

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(CNN)–MIT researchers have created tattoos that function as interfaces for smartphones and other digital devices. These tattoos can receive and send information, serving as wearable devices that add a personal touch of style.
The tattoos rely on gold leaf to sense a person’s touch, heat a display and communicate with other devices. The tattoos can connect wirelessly with smartphones through NFC, a type of technology used for mobile payments at retailers and elsewhere. The tattoo is powered by a lithium polymer battery and the brains of the operation is a small computing chip.
The concept comes from Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao — a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab — that grew out of an internship at Microsoft Research last summer. Kao has envisioned an end of the one-size-fits-all world of wearables; one where everyone uses nearly identical smartphones or smartwatches.