26 years ago or so I dated someone who worked in a McDonalds that had a prototype robotic drink filler. It worked great except sometimes it would dispense random drinks.
It was driven by a really long RS232 cable from a computer in the back, and the random behavior coincided with starting some motor...
It seemed like it would be an easy fix-- toss in RS-485 converters, or change the communication protocol to be robust to corruption-- but instead it ended up disabled most of the time when it would clog itself up with bogus dispenses. I believe it was regarded as a failure.
It was driven by a really long RS232 cable from a computer in the back, and the random behavior coincided with starting some motor...
It seemed like it would be an easy fix-- toss in RS-485 converters, or change the communication protocol to be robust to corruption-- but instead it ended up disabled most of the time when it would clog itself up with bogus dispenses. I believe it was regarded as a failure.