Yes, this seems to be exactly what they're doing – I posted a link on another thread to a Wired article that sheds some light on why these machines break down, and how McDonalds have waged legal war on a startup trying to bring some transparency to the internal operations of the Taylor machine.
Here it is again, to save searching through the comments: https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-...
[edited to add link]