mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Choose Your Simulator Wisely: A Review on Open-source Simulators for Autonomous Driving

arXiv 2311.11056 ↗First posted 18 Nov 2023cs.RO cs.LG cs.SEcited by 26

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

Simulators play a crucial role in autonomous driving, offering significant time, cost, and labor savings. Over the past few years, the number of simulators for autonomous driving has grown substantially. However, there is a growing concern about the validity of algorithms developed and evaluated in simulators, indicating a need for a thorough analysis of the development status of the simulators. To bridge the gap in research, this paper analyzes the evolution of simulators and explains how the functionalities and utilities have developed. Then, the existing simulators are categorized based on their task applicability, providing researchers with a taxonomy to swiftly assess a simulator's suitability for specific tasks. Recommendations for select simulators are presented, considering factors such as accessibility, maintenance status, and quality. Recognizing potential hazards in simulators that could impact the confidence of simulation experiments, the paper dedicates substantial effort to identifying and justifying critical issues in actively maintained open-source simulators. Moreover, the paper reviews potential solutions to address these issues, serving as a guide for enhancing the credibility of simulators.

Key facts. Cited by 26 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 65 of its 160 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 18 Nov 2023.

Builds on

65 of 160 references.

References · 65

  1. 2017CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulatorcited by 2,431
  2. 2018BDD100K: A Diverse Driving Dataset for Heterogeneous Multitask Learningcited by 1,282
  3. 2022Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesiscited by 720
  4. 2021Large Scale Interactive Motion Forecasting for Autonomous Driving : The Waymo Open Motion Datasetcited by 532
  5. 2020VectorNet: Encoding HD Maps and Agent Dynamics from Vectorized Representationcited by 528
  6. 2017AirSim: High-Fidelity Visual and Physical Simulation for Autonomous Vehiclescited by 517
  7. 2021NuPlan: A closed-loop ML-based planning benchmark for autonomous vehiclescited by 485
  8. 2023Neuralangelo: High-Fidelity Neural Surface Reconstructioncited by 464
  9. 2017Semantic Foggy Scene Understanding with Synthetic Datacited by 401
  10. 2019A Survey of Deep Learning Techniques for Autonomous Drivingcited by 401
  11. 2019A Survey of Autonomous Driving: Common Practices and Emerging Technologiescited by 373
  12. 2023UniSim: A Neural Closed-Loop Sensor Simulatorcited by 294
38 more
  1. 2021MetaDrive: Composing Diverse Driving Scenarios for Generalizable Reinforcement Learningcited by 281
  2. 2018The highD Dataset: A Drone Dataset of Naturalistic Vehicle Trajectories on German Highways for Validation of Highly Automated Driving Systemscited by 276
  3. 2016A Survey of Motion Planning and Control Techniques for Self-driving Urban Vehiclescited by 251
  4. 2017DeepTest: Automated Testing of Deep-Neural-Network-driven Autonomous Carscited by 249
  5. 2019INTERACTION Dataset: An INTERnational, Adversarial and Cooperative moTION Dataset in Interactive Driving Scenarios with Semantic Mapscited by 231
  6. 2016Driving in the Matrix: Can Virtual Worlds Replace Human-Generated Annotations for Real World Tasks?cited by 194
  7. 2023Waymax: An Accelerated, Data-Driven Simulator for Large-Scale Autonomous Driving Researchcited by 158
  8. 2016End-to-end Learning of Driving Models from Large-scale Video Datasetscited by 147
  9. 2019The inD Dataset: A Drone Dataset of Naturalistic Road User Trajectories at German Intersectionscited by 137
  10. 2019Meta-Sim: Learning to Generate Synthetic Datasetscited by 128
  11. 2020A Survey of End-to-End Driving: Architectures and Training Methodscited by 123
  12. 2020SMARTS: Scalable Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Training School for Autonomous Drivingcited by 121
  13. 2020LGSVL Simulator: A High Fidelity Simulator for Autonomous Drivingcited by 119
  14. 2020A Review and Comparative Study on Probabilistic Object Detection in Autonomous Drivingcited by 115
  15. 2019CityFlow: A Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Environment for Large Scale City Traffic Scenariocited by 114
  16. 2020Deep Learning for Image and Point Cloud Fusion in Autonomous Driving: A Reviewcited by 107
  17. 2022K-Radar: 4D Radar Object Detection for Autonomous Driving in Various Weather Conditionscited by 107
  18. 2019Deep Mesh Reconstruction from Single RGB Images via Topology Modification Networkscited by 106
  19. 2023Neural Kernel Surface Reconstructioncited by 102
  20. 2022A Survey on Safety-Critical Driving Scenario Generation -- A Methodological Perspectivecited by 100
  21. 2020Deep Reinforcement Learning for Intelligent Transportation Systems: A Surveycited by 94
  22. 2022POCO: Point Convolution for Surface Reconstructioncited by 91
  23. 2021SceneGen: Learning to Generate Realistic Traffic Scenescited by 83
  24. 2021VISTA 2.0: An Open, Data-driven Simulator for Multimodal Sensing and Policy Learning for Autonomous Vehiclescited by 81
  25. 2022BITS: Bi-level Imitation for Traffic Simulationcited by 80
  26. 2018Scenic: A Language for Scenario Specification and Scene Generationcited by 79
  27. 2022LiDAR Snowfall Simulation for Robust 3D Object Detectioncited by 72
  28. 2020SurfelGAN: Synthesizing Realistic Sensor Data for Autonomous Drivingcited by 68
  29. 2020Rain rendering for evaluating and improving robustness to bad weathercited by 56
  30. 2022Nocturne: a scalable driving benchmark for bringing multi-agent learning one step closer to the real worldcited by 56
  31. 2019Multi-Agent Connected Autonomous Driving using Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 53
  32. 2020Neural Splines: Fitting 3D Surfaces with Infinitely-Wide Neural Networkscited by 52
  33. 2020Adversarial Evaluation of Autonomous Vehicles in Lane-Change Scenarioscited by 42
  34. 2022Toward Real-world Single Image Deraining: A New Benchmark and Beyondcited by 40
  35. 2019SUMMIT: A Simulator for Urban Driving in Massive Mixed Trafficcited by 39
  36. 2022ClimateNeRF: Extreme Weather Synthesis in Neural Radiance Fieldcited by 37
  37. 2017Sim4CV: A Photo-Realistic Simulator for Computer Vision Applicationscited by 31
  38. 2022SIND: A Drone Dataset at Signalized Intersection in Chinacited by 29

50 most cited of 65 All 65 (JSON)

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 7; 2025: 12; 2026: 7.

26 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2025Scenario Dreamer: Vectorized Latent Diffusion for Generating Driving Simulation Environmentscited by 27
  2. 2024LiDAR-GS:Real-time LiDAR Re-Simulation using Gaussian Splattingcited by 15
  3. 2024The Role of Predictive Uncertainty and Diversity in Embodied AI and Robot Learningcited by 11
  4. 2024XLD: A Cross-Lane Dataset for Benchmarking Novel Driving View Synthesiscited by 9
  5. 2025Benchmarking Image Perturbations for Testing Automated Driving Assistance Systemscited by 4
  6. 2025Getting SMARTER for Motion Planning in Autonomous Driving Systemscited by 3
  7. 2025Industrial-Grade Sensor Simulation via Gaussian Splatting: A Modular Framework for Scalable Editing and Full-Stack Validationcited by 3
  8. 2024SS-ADA: A Semi-Supervised Active Domain Adaptation Framework for Semantic Segmentationcited by 2
  9. 2024Edge Case Detection in Automated Driving: Methods, Challenges, and Future Directionscited by 2
  10. 2025RGE-GS: Reward-Guided Expansive Driving Scene Reconstruction via Diffusion Priorscited by 2
  11. 2025UrbanTwin: Synthetic Roadside LiDAR Datasetscited by 2
  12. 2024TrafficGamer: Reliable and Flexible Traffic Simulation for Safety-Critical Scenarios with Game-Theoretic Oraclescited by 1
14 more
  1. 2025Simulator Ensembles for Trustworthy Autonomous Driving Systems Testingcited by 1
  2. 2025Comprehensive Assessment of LiDAR Evaluation Metrics: A Comparative Study Using Simulated and Real Datacited by 1
  3. 2026Physics-Aware 3D Gaussian Editing for Driving Scene Generationcited by 1
  4. 2024PRIBOOT: A New Data-Driven Expert for Improved Driving Simulationscited by 0
  5. 2025CORTEX-AVD: A Framework for CORner Case Testing and EXploration in Autonomous Vehicle Developmentcited by 0
  6. 2025Sky-Drive: A Distributed Multi-Agent Simulation Platform for Human-AI Collaborative and Socially-Aware Future Transportationcited by 0
  7. 2025UrbanTwin: Building High-Fidelity Digital Twins for Sim2Real LiDAR Perception and Evaluationcited by 0
  8. 2025High-Fidelity Digital Twins for Bridging the Sim2Real Gap in LiDAR-Based ITS Perceptioncited by 0
  9. 2026Artificial Intelligence for Modeling and Simulation of Mixed Automated and Human Trafficcited by 0
  10. 2026ScenarioControl: Vision-Language Controllable Vectorized Latent Scenario Generationcited by 0
  11. 2026Agent-driven Long-tail Simulation for Autonomous Drivingcited by 0
  12. 2026Assessing the Operational Impact of Poisoning Attacks over Augmented 3D Point Cloud Public Datasets for Connected and Autonomous Vehiclescited by 0
  13. 2026RoadWeaver: Large-Scale Lane-Level HD Map Generation from Scratch for Autonomous Driving Simulationcited by 0
  14. 2026SV2V-RSim: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Self-Selective V2V Cooperative Perception with Near-Realistic Datacited by 0