MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Training self-driving vehicles to handle unexpected situations is one of the biggest challenges to commercialization.
Autonomous technology companies frequently showcase how their self-driving software responds to unusual events and edge cases in general traffic, but few demonstrate what happens when something is physically amiss with the autonomous vehicle itself.
Flat tires, for example, can result in catastrophic consequences for self-driving trucks. At highway speeds, big rigs can be difficult to control when one of the tires they used for steering suffers a blowout.
That's one safety skill Kodiak Robotics Inc., a self-driving trucking startup, has been refining and demonstrating in closed-course testing. The company recently showed video from a test in which one of its Class 8 tractor-trailers driving at 35 mph runs over a device designed to puncture tires.
Within microseconds, it respon…