Challenges for reproducing real-life test runs in simulation for validating automated driving functions

This paper discusses the challenges for reproducing real-world tests of automated driving functions in simulation. Because of the complexity of the environment and the uncountable number of potential scenarios, a purely physical validation is impossible. Therefore, a huge amount of testing has to be done in a virtual environment. We are applying a scenario-based virtual validation approach. This means that the test cases are derived from representative scenarios. These scenarios can either be derived from functional, safety, or security analysis, based on expert knowledge or extracted from measurements. A lot of aspects have to be considered to get sufficiently detailed scenarios. Not all of them are completely defined yet.