[Armin] and his crew at BerkelaarMRT were contacted by the Museum of Communication in The Hague to see if they could build a coffee machine that was operated only by voice. It sounded like an interesting challenge, so they took on the job and came up with a very awesome interactive coffee machine.
The interactive coffee machine is based on a coffee maker made by Animo with the ability to make cappuccino, espresso, or just a straight coffee. The electronics are based on a Motorola Xoom 10″ tablet with an Electric Sheep module from Sparkfun. This, along with a custom-made PCB with optocouplers, to allow the buttons on the coffee maker to be electronically activated.
When anyone walks up to the coffee machine, a Maxbotix sonar module detects their presence and a small animated coffee cup asks what they’d like to drink. The cute little cup then prepares the drink and waits for its next human.
There’s a video of the machine in action available below. it’s in Dutch, but anyone will be able to get the jist of how the animated coffee machine operates.
Filed under: cooking hacks 
