Five Ways the iSample Could Be Truly Smart Vending

The BBC featured a story on the iSample, a vending machine that studies the demographics of its users as it sells them dessert.  Here are five ways Axeda's Smart Vending could take Intel and Kraft's kiosk to the next level.

5. Make it social

The kiosks are the focal point of the interaction - but why not get mobile in on the fun?  An M2M enabled app could let the customer tweet or post to Facebook and get recommendations on what others trying.  With Axeda's web services, creating a feature rich application with integration across third-party services is a breeze.

4.  Context Awareness

Sure it's got GPS and knows the temperature out, but how is that information being used?  The kiosk puts on a sale when it's cold out and advertises jelly desserts at half off.  The Axeda Platform has mobile location covered, plus it can correlate location and temperature data using its scripting engine. 

3.  Stock Out Alerts

So the kiosk's had a banner day and all the jelly desserts have been snatched up.  The restocking guy already knows, since he's received an alert via the Axeda Platform that lets him know it's time to fill 'er up.

2.  Age, Gender - How About Weight?

The obesity epidemic is no joke, and serious health complications afflict those who suffer from it.  The iSample can present a healthier set of options for its heavier clientele.  Using the Axeda Platform, a threshold rule can be set on the machine to determine which products to advertise first.

1.  Vending as a Service

There are only a couple of iSamples out there now, but when there are tens of thousands of machines to monitor, the iSample's eventual owners will need a solution for managing all that data.  Axeda's Platform offers asset management as a service, with intelligent harvesting of information available to create opportunity for innovation on an already capable machine.

Visit developer.axeda.com to learn more about the Axeda Platform, and be sure to check out the Smart Vending demo and article.