Free Coffee: Yawn At This Airport, Machine Gives Free Coffee [Video]

A free coffee for yawns? A coffee machine that uses facial recognition software to tell if someone is yawning — and then brews up a quick cup of Douwe Egberts coffee at no charge? That’s what was happening recently in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Check out the amazing promotion on this new video from Douwe Egberts that was filmed at Johannesburg’s international airport (JNB). As you’ll see, all you had to do is walk up to the device and yawn to get the free coffee.

In the airport test, 210 befuddled travelers yawned while fumbling around the coffee machine looking for a place to put in their money. The machine recognized the yawn, and — voilá — out came the coffee.

There really isn’t much more to it.

It wasn’t there the last time I was, and I’m not drinking coffee before a 16-hour nonstop from JNB to Atlanta anyway. Memory has blurred for some odd reason, but I seem to vaguely recall a decent selection of South African reds to choose from on my flight. Heh.

But for you poor critters stuck back there in the cargo hold, it’s something to look out for in the future.

I’m afraid that most of my travel contacts are degenerates like myself, found in lounges and business class cabins more often than at public coffee machines. So I don’t have a realtime report other than the video itself.

But here’s a comment from a Milespoint poster: “Now a similar beer machine…”

A poster on design website Taxi had far grander ideas:

“What a marvelous idea: A machine that reads faces and dispenses exactly what you need. They need machines that can read everything from tired faces to gang symbols (you never know when a gang member might be short of a weapon). Wonderful idea.”

Apparently, everyone agrees that the free coffee for yawns machine is just a starting place.

[Douwe Egbert coffee still photo credit: Hindrik S via photopin cc]