The next time you buy a Wall’s ice cream from a vending machine, you

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might end up trading your smile for one of your favourite flavours.

No, this is no joke! FMCG giant and the world’s largest ice cream maker Unilever, which promotes Wall’s and customer experience company SapientNitro, have teamed up to develop a vending machine that prompts a person to smile.

It uses augmented reality to draw passersby into a branded world. In simple terms, when one looks at the screen in front of the machine, it is filled with entertaining attractors like moustaches, funny hats, glasses, Wall’s style.

After it prompts you to smile, the vending device measures the wideness of your smile using facial recognition technology or the ‘smile-o-meter’, snaps a picture, and with your permission, uploads that snap to Facebook. Next, you choose the free ice cream treat of your choice via the touchscreen at the front of the machine and collect your reward.

The smile-activated ice cream vending machine made its first public appearance in May at the Rio festival in Lisbon, Portugal and later at Cannes, where SapientNitro won the Bronze Cyber Lion at the Cannes Lions 57th Annual International Advertising Festival.

“We have been test marketing the application with about 10 machines globally in the above mentioned places, Singapore and London in last few months. The actual rollout may start by end of this year, depending on Unilever,’’ said Gregory Boullin, Account Director, SapientNitro.

The company said these machines will roll out to high-traffic locations like shopping malls across the globe over the next 18 months, and will accept cash as well as grins for the products.

According to Michael Leonard, director — program management, SapientNitro, the firm’s creative team in London and technologists in Atlanta collaborated to create this groundbreaking experience by harnessing the power of latest technology across a number of realms, including facial recognition, 3G and Facebook.

Unique technologies used include advanced facial recognition software connecting webcams, flash up station with stop motion techniques and animation, graphic language, interface design, which were all designed and developed by SapientNitro. While Sanden Vendo supplied the vending machine, the screen was provided by Samsung.