World’s first smile activated vending machine

Ice cream makes people happy, and now this innovative vending machine is making Unilever’s consumers even happier – by dispensing ice cream in response to a smile. The industry-leading vending machines are part of Unilever’s ice cream mission: encouraging people everywhere to share moments of happiness.

Thanks to cutting-edge ‘smile recognition’ technology, when consumers approach the vending machine, their image appears on a monitor and their on-screen alter ego is playfully immersed in a virtual reality world. They’re then prompted to give their biggest smiile – measured by a smile-o-meter – before their photo is taken and, with their permission, uploaded to Facebook. Finally, their efforts are rewarded by being invited to choose a Wall’s ice cream from a touchscreen menu.

It was quite a logistics challenge designing, developing, assembling and shipping the vending machine between London, Atlanta and Cannes. It’s always exciting receiving first pictures of your product being made but this time, it was a little more than usual as I never saw any of it in real life during the process. It was only at Heathrow airport, weeks later, that I saw the vending machine in real life next to its predecessors. Proud.

Yes, somebody WAS actually paid to come up with this.