Nescafé Japan has a giant, mixed reality, Rube Goldberg instrument

Nescafé is looking to spice up the Christmas season at one of its Japanese coffee shops with the installation of an interactive, mixed-reality, Rube Goldberg machine that plays music while you wait for your coffee to brew. Available in the Harajuka district of Tokyo Nescafé coffee shop, visitors can listen to overly-engineering Christmas music as they order their drinks.

Designed to help promote the Nescafé Goldblend Barista application, which makes ordering coffee there easier than ever before, the machine is a monstrous construction that dominates the shopfront. It measures three metres wide and 3.5m high and took over five months to construct. Named the Pythagorean musical instrument, the machine is made up of 1,450 moving parts and has as many as 180 xylophone keys.

It is linked up with the in-store application and coffee machine, which takes the order and asks the customer what sort of mood they are in at the time. Depending on that selection, as well as the day they visit, the machine will then play an appropriate Christmas tune, such as Joy to the World or Winter Wonderland. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKQNsPOj8JQ']

Built over the course of five months using some of the latest laser-construction methods, there is even a mixed reality component in the machine. When the order is placed, a digital bird will appear on several screens and will appear to fly a red ball to the top of it. From there it ‘drops' the ball, which then appears in the real world, falling through the machine's many components, striking notes as it goes, which ultimately is what plays the tune during brewing.

Nescafé believes such a machine can help inject more interactive fun into its coffee shop settings, as well as encourage connecting people through shared experiences.

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KitGuru Says: That machine really is quite something. If you like similar machines, the Mad Museum in Stratford upon Avon would be right up your street. It's full of them.

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