Coca-Cola Freestyle Soda Fountains: Touchscreen 100-Flavor Control [Video]

Coca-Cola's Freestyle soda fountains, which will allow for up to 100 different flavors of beverage, have been demonstrated, complete with their new touchscreen UI designed by mobile software developer Bsquare.  The new fountains use concentrated flavor cartridges and a PurePour mixing technology first developed for delivering dialysis and cancer drugs.Video demo after the cut

Where traditional machines use a five-gallon bag of drink concentrate, which obviously limits the number of flavors a single unit can serve, the new Freestyle takes 46-ounce cartridges that are RFID tagged so as to match up with the computer program.  Tapping a Coca-Cola company drink on-screen calls up a variety of flavors which can be mixed to order; alternatively, the user can create their own flavors by tweaking the concentrates.

Each Freestyle machine is also connected to the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, feeding back data regarding consumption, popular flavors, which locations are proving most used and when cartridges are running low.  The communication is two-way, too, so the company can halt certain flavors should they need to recall the cartridge for any reason.  Sixty test Freestyle dispensers are expected to be in place around the US by the end of the summer; they're currently being trailed in Georgia, California and Utah.

[via GottaBeMobile]