unknown error: Chrome failed to start: exited abnormally (Driver info: chromedriver=2.8.undefined
At least on a linux machine, I think chrome needs an X11 display in order to start up. You can provide that as a regular display (when you run it as a normal user on a desktop environment), as a connection through a network to a normal remote or local display (e.g. through vnc server) or through a virtual apparatus like X virtual framebuffer.
For your purposes (testing) I'd say that Xvfb is probably the best option. See here for an example using it for testing.