The Role of Virtual Reality in Autonomous Vehicles’ Safety

Virtual Reality (VR) has played an important role in the development of autonomous robots. From Computer Aided Design (CAD) to simulators for testing automation algorithms without risking expensive equipment, VR has been used in a wide range of applications. Most recently, Autonomous Vehicles (AV), a special application of autonomous robots, became a major focus of the scientific and practitioner community for road and vehicle safety improvements. However, recent AV accidents shed a light on the new safety challenges that need be addressed to fulfill those safety expectations. This paper presents a systematic literature mapping on the use of VR for AV safety and assimilates this literature to create a vision of how VR will play an important role in the development of safety in AV.