Perk Up: Yawn-Activated Coffee Machine

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Most travelers know the feeling: You’ve just landed at the airport after a long and uncomfortable international flight, and all you want is a cup of coffee, but you haven’t changed money to the local currency yet. What to do? A Douwe Egberts coffee machine may be the perfect solution. The coffeemaker doesn’t take payment in cash, but instead serves up coffee at the sight of yawns.

The machine is outfitted with facial-recognition software, so when a weary traveler yawns, the machine recognizes the action and serves up a hot cup of coffee. Earlier this summer, the vending machine was placed at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport — undoubtedly a location filled with exhausted voyagers — as a marketing event by Douwe Egberts, the Dutch coffee company. The brand’s effective ploy served up 210 cups of coffee to those willing to yawn for their caffeine.

Now if they could only make this innovative technology available for home use, so early-morning coffeemaking could be transformed.

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