All of us are already familiar with coin vending machine, also we are familiar with gems, chocolate vending machine that are operated by humans to receive the various stuffs in exchange of coins (money). But have you ever heard of peanut vending machine for crows, which is autonomously operated by crows themself.

The crow vending machine developed as a part of experiement in corvid learning resource acquisition startegy from gadgetoff will autonomously train the crow to drop the coin, or some similar kind of stuff found in garbage in the vending machine (box) and in return obtain the peanuts as food for them. Aside is the diagrammatic view of the machine, when crow arrives near the machine. Many more such images, can found here.

The official site of “Crow Vending Machine” have listed out some of the possible research topic that can be undertaken once this concept runs successfully. Here are some of research topics.

A) Deploying one of the devices in the territory of a large group of unmated young, and once they’ve learned it deploying multiple versions of the device in disparate feeding territories, all set to the last stage (only delivering food when coins are inserted). This could test if/how/at what rate resource acquisition strategies are dispersed,

B) Deploying multiple versions of the device in widely disparate territories (such as throughout the US) to test the general learning abilities of corvids in different locales,

C) Deploying one of the devices near a mated pair, and then another in the territory of one of their offspring to see if the resource acquisition behavior is retained/rediscovered.

Etc. Such a device could also be a quant addition to a theme-park where interaction with crows could help steer people away from their reputation as vermin and also to increase awareness of their cognitive abilities.

The device was recently tried out in Ithica with Dr. Clarks population with enormous success. Authors presentation with “GadgetOff” have called it as “Bringing Smarter and useless together.” A presentation video about the crow vending machine is provided below.

A detail about the projects can be found here.