Zoox, the Amazon-owned robotaxi company, issued a recall after one of its self-driving cars blundered into a cloud of heavy smoke near a fire scene that emergency workers were responding to, and became confused.
The recall, in the form of a software update, will affect its entire fleet of 105 autonomous robotaxis.
The patch “enhances the existing capability of detecting active [emergency] scenes by adding the ability to detect and respond to heavy smoke in certain situations,” Zoox told TechCrunch in a statement.
While you wouldn’t be remiss for thinking this was related to the wildfire smoke covering much of the eastern US right now, the recall highlights how self-driving cars still struggle to respond to unpredictable conditions.
