Remember Chaotic Moon and its Bitcoin harvesting fitness tracker from earlier this year? Well, the Austin-based mobile app developer and moonshot lab is back with a teched up tattoo capable of acting as an advanced fitness tracker.
Tech Tats uses electroconductive ink to connect sensors pressed against the skin, which can keep an eye on body vital signs, which could include temperature or vital signs. These can be stuck anywhere on the body, making them more discreet than standard wrist-based trackers.
Essential reading: The future of biometric sensors
Chaotic Moon sees the technology being used to monitor soldiers in the battlefield or keeping an eye on children's health, and it says it's talking to partners about bringing Tech Tats to market. However, more interestingly for us, it says the development represents the future of wearable devices:
"This is the new wearable," Lamm told TechCrunch. "The future of wearables is biowearables."
Just like today's wearables, the tech tattoo uses Bluetooth Low Energy to talk to a smartphone, and it obviously requires power. The video briefly shows a fairly large watch battery stuck onto the arm, which sort of ruins the aesthetic a little.
We're guessing that this kind of set up wouldn't need much power – although when you scale that to hours or days spent in the battlefield that could become an issue.
However, it's another sign that wearables could be set to disappear from sight, and become more discreet.
Check out our report on the rise of the invisibles.
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James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.