Those who travel far and frequently would know the feeling of abject tiredness as they live out of a suitcase, and transit lounges are their second homes. While we are always advised to drink more water and some fruit juice on long travels, avoiding coffee since it is a diuretic, there is just this particular pull about coffee that makes it one drink that will perk you right up, especially with a jolt of caffeine. What you see above is a Douwe Egberts coffee machine that is slightly different from the rest – it does not receive any kind of payment regardless of the dollar note or coins that you try to put in, but rather, the “currency” of choice would be yawns.
Yes sir, this Douwe Egberts coffee machine has been retro-fitted with facial-recognition software and a camera, allowing it to know just when a weary traveler yawns before whipping up a piping hot cup of java. Needless to say, you would have to be relatively near for it to work, and it saw action at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport earlier this year as part of a marketing event by Douwe Egberts, and throughout the duration of the vending machine’s placement, it served up 210 cups of coffee to yawning passers-by. Now, if only there was a way to translate this particular feature over to home- or office-based coffee machines…