Autonomous driving simulation platforms play a vital role in the development, testing and validation of autonomous driving systems. A systematic review of the classification and key technical pathways of mainstream simulation platforms was presented, covering aspects such as environment modeling, sensor simulation, vehicle dynamics modeling, perception algorithm evaluation, V2X communication and cloud-based simulation. Core challenges and research progress related to synthetic data generation, cost-effective algorithm training, cross-domain generalization and platform scalability were analyzed, emphasizing simulation technologies based on computer vision and artificial intelligence. Future development trends were discussed. Simulation platforms are evolving toward higher realism, interactivity and closed-loop validation with the advancement of emerging technologies such as generative AI, neural rendering and multimodal learning, gradually forming a comprehensive pipeline that integrates data generation, algorithm training and performance evaluation. Simulation platforms will continue to play an essential role in enhancing the generalization capability of autonomous driving system, accelerating product deployment, and establishing standard testing and validation framework in the future.
LV Juntao, QI Jueyu, YU Haochen, MA Lei, MA Huimin, HU Tianyu. Current status and future prospect of integrated simulation platform for autonomous driving. Journal of Zhejiang University(Engineering Science)[J], 2026, 60(3): 513-526 doi:10.3785/j.issn.1008-973X.2026.03.007
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