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UCSD Biometric Vending Machine

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue Aug 01, 2006 05:19 PM
from the tracking-your-soda-habits dept.
Hardware Hacking Programming IT Technology
dice writes to tell us that grad students at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) are creating the first biometric vending machine. The current machine comes equipped with a barcode scanner, a fingerprint reader, and a web cam for facial recognition. One student dubbed it the "most over-designed soda machine in the world." The project, code-named "SodaVision," is the brainchild of associate professor Stefan Savage, but it was the students who really made it come to life. And yes, it runs Linux.
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  • ...I won't get my $.50 back now when I flip off the soda machine every time it chomps my coins? Or, is the snack machine going to recognize my frustration, and shake the stuck bag of Cheetos loose for me?

    People sure have a lot of time on their hands!

    • > ...I won't get my $.50 back now when I flip off the soda machine every time it chomps my coins? Or, is the snack machine going to recognize my frustration, and shake the stuck bag of Cheetos loose for me?

      Never flip off a vending machine. They carry one hell of a grudge.

      DISPENSER: You are my nemesis... one day, our paths will cross again, and I - I will destroy you...

      RIMMER: And on that day, I will be the Captain of this ship.

      (A whole lot of plot spoilers happen)

      DISPENSER: Every dog has its d

    • More than likely, it will recognise you and put the can of soda through a tortuous journey through the shakers and bangers to make sure you have a nice drink of soda delivered right up your nose when you open it.

  • afraid to vote.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by qewl (671495) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @05:23PM (#15828146)
    Let me be the first to say, I'd be afraid to vote on that thing. Especially libertarian..

  • *sighs* (Score:5, Funny)

    by Whiney Mac Fanboy (963289) * <whineymacfanboy@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 01 2006, @05:24PM (#15828151) Homepage Journal
    from tfa:

    Stick your thumb on the reader so the machine recognizes you as having an account, take out the drink, scan it with the barcode reader, then walk way


    Lucky students are notoriously honest.

    • Re:*sighs* (Score:5, Informative)

      by Skim123 (3322) <mitchellNO@SPAM4guysfromrolla.com> on Tuesday August 01 2006, @05:56PM (#15828316) Homepage
      I was a CS grad student at UCSD from 2001-2003. What they had when I was there was something called CafeBob or something like that. It had the barcode scanner. You'd enter your name, scan the item, and it would "deduct" the cost from your account. You could "credit" your account by putting money in a box and then, from the computer, keying in that you deposited X dollars. Very trusting. It was a "co-op" vending machine/system - students would take money from the box to go buy the sodas, snacks, and so on (IIRC).

      I guess now they're taking out the part where you entered your ID and password, and replacing it with a biometric scanner. But, if this is in the same CS grad student lounge, the barcode scanner and basic inventory software has been in place for some time now.

      • Re:*sighs* (Score:3, Informative)

        by Lux (49200)
        They're making Bob less trusting, in part because money had always been slowly leaking away due to theft or negligence in payment.

        To correct the grandparent, it seems that you have to authenticate *before* the machine will vend a soda, which agrees with some announcements I noticed on the department mailing lists. (I'm not at UCSD any more, but I still get the e-mail.) I suspect the scanning is just for inventory tracking, not payment. Maybe the maintainers get an e-mail whenever x Mt. Dews get dispensed

        • Re:*sighs* (Score:2, Interesting)

          by d4 (144309)
          Actually Chez Bob hasn't been leaking money the past few years; it's actually been slowly accumulating capital. The losses stopped when more effective means were undertaken to prevent unauthorized persons (read: undergraduate students) from entering.

          Chez Bob is as trusting as ever, and inventory is still as untracked and unreliable as ever. ;)

  • Many Mountain Dews... (Score:4, Funny)

    by demonbug (309515) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @05:25PM (#15828155) Journal
    were killed to bring us this device.

    Seems really pointless when you think of vending machines that sell soft drinks and snacks, but I guess there could be a use for more-secure vending machines for higher-dollar items (like the one selling iPods I saw a month or two back).
    • reducing the cost of the iPod to 1 brick.

    • Medical use comes to mind as there are already "vending machines" networked to reduce prescription drug screw ups in hospitals as well as a way account for who took what drugs from inventory and for what patient.
    • I don't think this even makes sense for higher-dollar items. All vending machines are designed to ensure that goods are not delivered until payment is provided, and, as a secondary consideration, that after payment is provided, goods are delivered.

      Why would anyone care *who* bought the iPod, or what their fingerprint looked like?

      This is extremely small niche. The scenario where this is useful is where there is small community of people who make very frequent use of the machine. The biometric identificati

  • Hmm.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by yourOneManArmy (986080) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @05:27PM (#15828166)
    When I read the summary I thought, "Hey this sounds pretty useless, but maybe I just missed something." Then I read the article, and I'm still thinking, "Hey this sounds pretty useless."

    • Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by v783650 (948198) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @05:29PM (#15828187)
      Just because it's impractical doesn't make it useless. I'm sure the engineers behind it learned many valuable lessons. Why all the hate? There's nothing wrong with science for science's sake.

      • Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Funny)

        by heinousjay (683506) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @05:59PM (#15828327) Journal
        There is absolutely nothing wrong with science for science's sake. This, however, was engineering for engineering's sake, which is one of the most evil forces in the universe.
      • I don't question your first sentence, but the rest of your post scared me. Now, just telling that some thing is useless qualifies as hate-speak, is it what you mean? A giant step for PC-speak, indeed.
      • There's nothing wrong with science for science's sake, or with engineering for engineering's sake. But that doesn't mean that whatever you come up with isn't useless.

        In fact, when you pursue something for the sole purpose of learning about it, rather than a concerted effort to achieve a particular goal, what you end up with usually is useless.

    • Useful? We think so :-) (Score:5, Informative)

      by StefanSavage (454543) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @06:26PM (#15828439)
      Seriously, I suppose usefulness is in the eye of the beholder, but from my rather pragmatic standpoint the machine has one very important use: it allows me to get a coke with very little effort (while differentiating my debts from those of others). There's really nothing more to it that that. I think people are looking for something deep, or new a new product category, or some groundbreaking science... move on... you won't find it here.

      This project really had two goals: make it easy to buy soft drinks from our grad student co-op and have fun building a real artifact.

      The latter part -- having fun -- is underappreciated. Really, the students had a great time putting the pieces together... they had to design and build an interface board to Vendo's control bus, they had to build a UI (that student was a ST:TNG fan so the interface mimics the screens from the series), they had to interface it to our MySql database that holds user accounts, etc. It was a real esprit de coeur project and one in which everyone had alot of fun. Once it was working, people started adding other components: a 2d bar code scanner (not used for soda, contrary to the article, but for candy and other goods), they added visual recognition (and there is a banana detector in the works to register purchase of bananas), there is a voice synthesizer that can say "Shame" out loud if your cash balance in the co-op goes negative, there is even a student who has been talking about door-to-door delivery using a robot, etc.

      I suspect if we had called it a "case mod", people would have had understood the spirit in which it was built.

      • Chez Bob (Score:3, Informative)

        by ShakaUVM (157947)
        Heya Stefan,

        I (Bill Kerney) was a grad student in CS at UCSD until '01 or '02 or so under Scott Baden.

        For those who don't know, the Chez Bob computer was the most overengineered ledger in the history of ledgers. Every year some student would hack it to do something new and unusual. When I was there, they:
        1) Added passwords (which were not really needed since the fridge door wasn't locked or anything if you wanted to steal something)
        2) Added text to speech.
        3) Added a saying it could say whenever you logged i

  • DEW 9000 (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Open the pop bay door now...

  • Well my toaster runs NetBSD! (Score:5, Funny)

    by saterdaies (842986) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @05:28PM (#15828177)
    This project is nothing! Linux on a soda machine? I've had NetBSD running on my toaster for years ;)

  • gone! (Score:3, Informative)

    by LotsOfPhil (982823) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @05:30PM (#15828192)
    Not only is the article slashdotted, so is their site, http://sodavision.com/ [sodavision.com]. The latter has a few more details.

    • I was able to get to that site just fine.

      Though I find it strains credulity. Am I expected to believe there are soda vending machines out there that vend both Coke and Pepsi products?

      /still angry over zero-day reneging on no-price-increase promise in granting campus monopoly to Pepsi and getting 70-cent 16 oz. bottle vending machines exclusively (12 oz. cans were 50 cents), a price point that virtually guaranteed that the machines would run out of nickels, effectively raising the price to 75 cents a

  • The most overhacked vending machine... (Score:3, Funny)

    by creimer (824291) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @05:32PM (#15828204) Homepage
    Now the black and white hats in the computer science department will now have a new toy to fight over. Whoever gets the most freebies wins!

    • Now the black and white hats in the computer science department will now have a new toy to fight over. Whoever gets the most freebies wins!

      No, no. You see, the white hats aren't in it to drink soda. They're there just to test security, so they'll break in, take a picture to prove they did it, write an email to the designers, and get arrested by campus security.

      The black hats in the department will break in, but they don't actually want anyone to know that they managed to break in, or how...so they wo

  • ... SCARY ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TCFOO (876339) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @05:46PM (#15828271)
    sorry but paying by fingerprint is a little to scary for me. it's another way for big brother to watch you.
    • Big Brother knows if you prefer Pepsi or Coke, and he uses it to rape babies.
    • They have a special option if you don't want to use your fingerprints. You can have an 18 digit code (3 groups of 6) imprinted on your forehead or on the back of your right hand.
    • big brother can watch you regardless of how you buy your soda(or whatever)
      thats not the problem, the problem is what happens if your finger prints get compromisd?
        • And what about the thieves who think cutting off a finger might be a neat way to get a soda?!?!? Of course, the designers will say that they will guard against this. But, thieves don't always think things through and might cut something off anyway. Sure, dummy's like that are going to get caught, but my digits won't work a keyboard or play music like they used to. When will I be able to buy insurance for my fingers and eyeballs that is specifically geared to address biometric crimes (as opposed to gener
  • Hello! Thank you for using soda vision! You have ingested: 250 grams of sugar today, 1,800 grams of sugar this week, and 7,212 grams this month for a grand total of 15.9 lbs! Congratulations, you are a candidate for TYPE A Diabetes!

  • I've been wondering about this . . . (Score:4, Interesting)

    by code shady (637051) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @05:51PM (#15828302) Homepage
    They say here that they used a webcam to do the facial recognition.
    I haven't RTFA yet so I'm not sure which brand or model they use, but would the average webcam provide a high enough resolution to do effective facial recognition?

    Would it be possible to write a simple hack that uses the built in camera on a macbook to do the same kind of thing?

    Any facial recognitiion experts out there care to weigh in?

  • This makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pHatidic (163975) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @06:08PM (#15828365) Homepage
    Combining biometrics makes identification less accurate. Using both face recognition and a finger print scan would be less accurate than using either alone. For a source, see John Daugman's webpage [cam.ac.uk]. He is the one who invented the algorithm that modern iris scanners use.

    Anyway, methinks some investors are being taken for a ride here.
    • I read that web page, and it's completely correct, but only under its ridiculously restrictive assumptions about the nature of the tests and how they can be combined.

      A standard Bayesian network combining the results of tests which have continuous (rather than boolean) outputs, something which many algorithms for facial recognition, fingerprints, etc, will, on average, give strictly better results than the use of either tests alone - this is not only simple to prove, but the basis of many modern classifica

  • Fortunately... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Black Parrot (19622) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @06:19PM (#15828411)
    > And yes, it runs Linux.

    Fortunately they haven't been able to find a driver for the anal probe.
  • What would you like to drink today ?!

    Oh, I see: you're a coca cola man, I see it in your fingerprint !

    Or... wait... you like pepsi too, don't you ?!

    Wow... I really feel great here ! As a matter of fact, I feel so great that I'll dispense you your drink for free !

    Weeeh !
  • I have to worry about somebody cutting my head off, and not just my finger ...
  • welcome out Linux running soda machine overlords.
    • The sad thing is I typed "out" instead of "our" because I was rushing to get the joke in first. Must get a life, must get a life... Can I order it online, maybe with some jolt to go?
  • As long as it doesn't try to give me something that is "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea"...
  • No more fake IDs. In Loco Parentis without people. Knows to not dispense on Sundays until the churches have closed.

    Talks to Diebold machines on voting days to comply with State laws. Switches you to light beer after the first six.

    Cuts you off after a few too many, to keep underage students from cutting off older, sleeping roommates' fingers.

    • Yeah, here's the linux machine

      Bob: I want a soda
      Machine: ....
      Bob: Hello?!? I want a soda!
      Machine: ....
      Passerby: Dude, there's no decent voice recognition software for this machine yet.
      Bob: Fine, I'll just put in money.

      *Bob puts in dollar*

      Bob: WTF?! It took my dollar, why doesn't it show my credit?
      Passerby: There are no drivers for the bill counter yet. Oh, and don't bother with coins either. They haven't released those drivers either.
      Bob: Well how the fuck am I supposed to get my soda?
      Passerby: Well, wri

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