A Japanese company has developed the Do Hiemon Box, a human-sized cooling booth designed not for food or drinks, but for people trying to escape the heat. Developed by refrigeration and vending-machine manufacturer SDRS and sold by industrial equipment supplier Trusco Nakayama, the stainless-steel machine is roughly the size of a vending machine.

The unusual invention is intended to help people working in high temperatures cool themselves down and reduce the risk of heatstroke.

Japan has introduced a “human fridge,” a personal cooling booth designed to help people cool down during extreme summer heat.
With heat becoming unbearable, we should put them in street corners during summer 😄 pic.twitter.com/pbhODOTwuY

— Harsh Goenka (@hvgoenka) August 2, 2026

A refrigerator, but for humans

The idea is simple: get inside, sit down and let the machine cool you.

The Do Hiemon Box keeps its interior at around 15 degrees Celsius, while vents blow air as cold as 5 degrees Celsius — roughly the temperature of a refrigerator’s chiller compartment.

The cold air is directed towards the user’s head, neck, shoulders and back. According to the manufacturer, users can feel noticeably cooler in around five minutes.

The machine comes with three airflow settings and automatically shuts off after 20 minutes, preventing the occupant from staying inside for too long.

Looks like a vending machine, works like a cooling booth

At a little over two metres tall and 93 centimetres wide, the Do Hiemon Box is roughly the size of a standard vending machine. It weighs around 293 kilograms.

Despite that weight, it does not have to stay in one place. The booth sits on casters, allowing it to be moved around, and requires no special installation beyond being connected to a power outlet.

That makes the machine particularly suited to places such as construction sites, where workers can be exposed to high temperatures while working outdoors.

Why cool the whole room when you can cool the person

The Do Hiemon Box takes a different approach to dealing with heat. Rather than using air conditioning to cool the surrounding space, it directs chilled air at the person inside.

According to manufacturer data, the booth costs around 16 yen per hour to run and uses roughly half the energy of a comparable spot air conditioner.

From cold drinks to cooling people

SDRS already works with refrigeration and vending machines, but the Do Hiemon Box turns that technology towards a different target: the person standing in front of the vending machine rather than the drink inside it.

The product went on sale in Japan in April, offering an unusual answer to a serious problem as increasingly hot summers raise concerns over heatstroke.

It may resemble something built to keep drinks cold, but this time, the thing being cooled is you.

(This article is curated by Aditi Anand, who is an intern with The Indian Express)