# The Adaptive Stress Testing Formulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04293 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04293/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 8 Apr 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Finding Failures in High-Fidelity Simulation using Adaptive Stress Testing and the Backward Algorithm](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.12940/) (2021)
- [Adaptive Failure Search Using Critical States from Domain Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.00365/) (2023)
- [A novel framework for adaptive stress testing of autonomous vehicles in multi-lane roads](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11813/) (2024)
- [Importance Sampling and PCA for Finding Failures in Commercial Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.18106/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Validation is a key challenge in the search for safe autonomy. Simulations are often either too simple to provide robust validation, or too complex to tractably compute. Therefore, approximate validation methods are needed to tractably find failures without unsafe simplifications. This paper presents the theory behind one such black-box approach: adaptive stress testing (AST). We also provide three examples of validation problems formulated to work with AST.