The Jedi Vending Machine - Intel Perceptual Computing Project

By Sijie Yang | Sarang Borude | Matt Jennex | Travis Ritchie

This was a collaborative project with Intel Perceptual Computing Lab. They provided us with a Creative Interactive Gesture Camera Developer Kit to allow us to build any sensed interactive objects in context. We went through several exploration stages such as brainstorming, exemplar review, concept mapping, and bodystorming. Our final design is a buttonless vending machine operated by specific hand gestures. We chose a Star Wars theme to guide our design for a few reasons: It lent us a specific context and target audience, and it let us adapt to an existing mental model for our users. This last one is important because interacting with a vending machine using gestures isn’t something we expect our users to be familiar with. By making the gestures the same as the “force pull” mechanic from Star Wars, and situating our design in a movie context where most of our users will be familiar with the gestures, we soften the problem of users adapting to a mental model they are not familiar with.

The motion camera will capture a user’s hand when he extends it, and will light up boxes under products when his hand is pointed at one particular product. When the camera detects an open hand, a timer will start, when this timer is finished we will use an arduino to open a valve on a tank of compressed air and blow the candy off the vending rack and into the user’s hand. The delay between users opening their hands and shooting the snack represents the effort required to do a force pull. During this delay, the machine will play sound clips of Star Wars encouraging the users to concentrate harder so they can use the force.