Driving Simulators for Autonomous Vehicles: Comprehensive Review of Current Applications and Research Trends

Driving simulators have become essential tools for accelerating the development of advanced driver assistance systems (ADASs) and autonomous vehicles (AVs) by enabling safe, repeatable, flexible, and cost-effective experimentation across increasing levels of vehicle automation. Despite their growing adoption in both academia and industry, the recent literature lacks a comprehensive review that captures recent advancements and the expanding role of simulators in both feature-level ADAS development and fully autonomous driving research. This paper addresses this gap by presenting a systematic review of the evolution of driving simulators and their critical contributions to automotive research, testing, and validation. A structured taxonomy of contemporary simulators is introduced, encompassing fidelity, physical configuration, scale, licensing, and system integration strategies. Key application domains are examined, including driver-centred behaviour and human–machine interaction studies, traffic modelling and control, vehicle dynamics and powertrain development, and the testing of ADAS and autonomous driving subsystems across perception, planning, control, and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication. This review highlights driving simulators as foundational enablers for the safe, efficient, and scalable deployment of increasingly automated vehicle technologies.