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Discoblog
« Each Shot of Mezcal Contains a Little Bit of DNA From the “Worm”
NCBI ROFL: Did Gollum have schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder? »

Augmented Reality Tattoos Are Visible Only to a Special Camera

021510_rg_ThinkAnApp_02If you’ve been dying to get a kick-ass dragon tattoo but feel like it might not go over well with prospective employers or your mom, then here’s a sneaky, roundabout way to satisfy your yearning. You can get the tattoo using augmented reality–and for an extra dose of kick-ass, the dragon will flap its leathery wings.

The concept was developed by a Buenos Aires-based software company called ThinkAnApp. In the video below, you’ll see a guy’s arm tattooed with what looks like a plain rectangular box. But that box is essentially a barcode. The company has devised a camera with special software that reads this barcode, and then superimposes an animated image.

Dvice reports:

When viewed through a specially equipped camera, the seemingly plain box design suddenly displays a three-dimension dragon. The possibilities for art projects, information distribution, and social engineering via body art inherent in this idea are fascinating.

Related Content:
The Loom: Science Tattoo Emporium
Science, Not Fiction: Seeing The Future, Literally
Discoblog: One Small Step Closer to Superhuman Cyborg Vision
Discoblog: Will the Laptops of the Future Be a Pair of Eye Glasses?

Image: ThinkAnApp

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February 17th, 2010 2:00 PM Tags: augmented reality, tattoos
by Smriti Rao in Technology Attacks! | 5 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

  • Haruspex

    This isn’t a specially equipped camera. It’s a normal camera with software which interprets the image. Flash has been doing this for some time:
    http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/augmented_reality.html

    The only innovation here is putting the barcode/icon on the skin and being able to read it off of a curved surface.

    It’s a cool gimmick, but ultimately it doesn’t need to be a tattoo. It could be a temporary rub on, or Sharpie drawings, or what-have-you. There are bigger implications here than tattoos.

  • person

    it’s be cooler it you could use an actual bar code tattoo, and not some stupid looking square

  • http://blogs.myspace.com/posada_brent brent posada

    One small step for man, one giant step for retard-kind! Come on, if you don’t want a tattoo that people are going to see, you don’t need a tattoo period! It’s art! Love it. See it. Don’t hide it in a retarded black box!

  • poet_ishmael

    This should be incorporated into the better managed social networks within three months.

  • http://rapidcow.com Buzz

    It`s be cooler it you could use an actual bar code tattoo.





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      Discoblog is DISCOVER's compendium of quirky, funny, and surprising science news from the edge of the known universe. It's written by Veronique Greenwood and Valerie Ross. Email tips and suggestions to vgreenwood [at] discovermagazine [dot] com.

      Discoblog also includes the daily feature NCBI ROFL, in which two prone-to-distraction grad students post real scientific articles with funny subjects. Email your tips to ncbirofl [at] gmail.com. Follow the ROFL feed here.

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