The project is shown off in the video below. The gist of it is that a compact robot arm is put into the drop area of a vending machine. After the flap is closed the wired remote control is used to raise up the telescoping arm, and grip the soda can with the grippers. It’s brilliant and devious all at the same time. About four minutes in we get a great look at the hardware itself… a super hack!
The entire video is in French, but the YouTube captions translator actually worked quite well with this video. Via hack a day