Chaotic Moon, a company based in Austin, Texas, has been working on a new type of Biowearable device that has the potential to disrupt several industries. Their idea is called Tech Tatts–a temporary tattoo that consists of electric paint instead of ink. Other than the fact that this tattoo doesn’t require any needles, there are many other things that make Tech Tatts really awesome.

According to it’s creators, this device will be able to take place of monitoring devices in hospitals, which will declutter crowded hospital rooms. It will also allow patients to be more mobile, since the Tech Tatt is externally placed on your skin and will not be hooked into walls and other surfaces. Tech Tatt’s aren’t only for hospital patients though. They will be able to track the user’s health and fitness year-round, so those annual checkups would be a thing of the past. The device will be able to alert you at the first signs of illness. Instead of staying home on Wednesday to combat the flu you’ve been anticipating since Monday, you will be able to immediately treat the symptoms. This will increase overall productivity of students and workers.

Although Tech Tatts are extremely beneficial to the health industry, they also have other convenient uses. They would be linked to your smart phone, so you can get notifications with ease. This will also allow you to monitor yourself in the same way a FitBit monitors you. The developers of Tech Tatts also believe their product would disrupt the banking industry. All of your card information could be kept in the Tech Tatt instead of in your wallet, where it is vulnerable to identity thieves. This would also allow users to not have to worry about losing or forgetting their wallet while moving from store to store.

Eric Schneider, the Creative Technologist at Chaotic Moon, also discusses the customization of Tech Tatts. Users would have the ability to design their Tech Tatt as if it were a normal tattoo. Overall, the Tech Tatt is an innovation that could both help and destroy several existing industries. The prototype definitely illustrates where the future of technology is heading.

Like all great educational facilities–yes, that was a shoutout to Penn State–Stanford has student-run organizations. The Stanford Solar Car Project was started by students in 1989 and has been going ever since. Recently, they have achieved great success that gets me very excited for the future of the automotive industry. These Stanford students have worked tirelessly to create a car that is light, aerodynamic, and capable of running completely on solar energy. Students in the organization have created several models throughout the years and have successfully test driven their cars in California and Australia.

Another company has been making waves in the solar industry as well. According to Sarah Buhr from TechCrunch, Stella has created a solar vehicle capable of seating a family of four. The car is capable of driving 500 miles on a single charge (and the charge is free because it’s from the sun!) The car made the 5 hour and 36 minute drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco on one charge. It is also legal to drive in the United States and has the same safety features as any other car!

With companies becoming more dedicated to sustainable automobiles, it makes me very excited for the future. When gasoline is no longer a practical source of fuel, it’ll be nice to know that industry profiles are working on alternative solutions–and that these solutions are realistic. Hopefully the cars will get a little prettier, but hey, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Some of us might know the anxiety-inducing feeling of looking in your rearview mirror and seeing red and blue lights flashing. It ruins your day, right? Well, thank Goodness cars don’t have feelings. CNN posted an article on Friday which said Google’s Self-Driving car was pulled over–for driving too slow. As we know from class, Google has been testing out their self-driving cars recently. The cars currently have a speed limit cap of 25 mph for safety reasons. Although the car was pulled over, no one received a ticket because the car had not actually broken any law.

This raised a fews of questions in my mind: What will happen if self-driving cars are pulled over for speeding? Who will get the ticket? What will the speed cap on the cars be when they are out of the prototype stage? I don’t have the answers to any of these questions; however, I do have more to say.

In the article, it highlighted Ford, GM, and Tesla because they are also working on self-driving vehicles. According to Stephanie Mlot from PC Magazine, Ford is using a fake city in the University of Michigan to test out their version of an autonomous car. This city, referred to as “Mcity”, looks exactly like the cities we know, with street lights, stop signs, trees, fire hydrants, etc., except it is unpopulated. By watching the videos in the article, it is clear to see that the Ford Fusion tests are successful. The car is also much prettier than Google’s version.

In five years time, there may be an successful, competitive market for self-driving vehicles. We would shop for our self-driving cars the same way we shop for our cars now, by make, model, color, and size. If the idea of autonomous cars takes off, luxury high-speed vehicles might go out of business because of the speed controls on these self-driving cars (Why buy a car that can go 200 mph if it will only allow you to hit 65?). Also, taxi drivers will definitely not be needed anymore. In class I was originally opposed to the idea of self-driving cars because of all the jobs we will lose. However, after reading these articles I decided it might be safer to live in a world with autonomous vehicles. The main benefit would be that visually impaired citizens will finally be able to drive, which is absolutely incredible! There are also a lot of safety benefits of having self-driving cars on the road. Since the self-driving cars will have speed controls on them, no one would ever get into a car accident from speeding. Drunk drivers will be a thing of the past. And even if parents are up all night tending to their children, they will still be able to safely commute to work. Whether you agree with me or not, that’s fine! But self-driving cars are definitely in our future and we need to be ready to embrace them.

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