How far would you go for a free cup of coffee? A vending machine placed in Soho Square, London by U.K. coffee company Kenco Millicano sought to find out. The machine shouted out orders at passing people, telling them to dance and scream and even hug the machine. If people did as told, then Bender the Kenco Millicano vending machine rewarded them with a hot cup of Joe.

Coffee vending machines aren't anything new – you can usually find them at hospitals, in airports, or even outside of grocery stores next to the usual soda vending machine. And technological advances have made it possible to build coffee robots that brew up a cappuccino with as much precision as a human barista, all with a press of a few buttons.

In those use cases, however, a person orders the machine to perform a certain act – not the other way around. Ad agency Leo Burnett created the Kenco Millicano coffee machine to promote the brand, but it also provided a novel, and humorous, look at how people react to a very demanding machine. As you can see from the video below, most of the time, people enjoy and embrace the experience.

Granted, the Kenco Millicano machine had a voice actor speak through the machine, adding a human quality to the big, metal box. But even when a machine is missing any human touch, people tend to react in the same way. In July, another company tested out how people would react to a somewhat abusive vending machine, minus all of the human shouting. Australian snack maker Fantastic Delites put up a machine that asked passersby to press a button up to 5,000 times, dance, or even bow down to it in exchange for a free box of snacks. The vending machine succeeded at coercing people without speaking a single word, displaying all of its commands on its screen.

In April, Coke employed a similar, though more friendly, approach. If you hugged the Coke vending machine, it would dispense a free soda.

Behaviorists probably have a good term for all of this, but robots just call it "gaining their trust."

[via Design Taxi]