In this paper, we introduce the notion of Cooperative Perception Error Models (coPEMs) towards achieving an effective and efficient integration of V2X solutions within a virtual test environment. We focus our analysis on the occlusion problem in the (onboard) perception of Autonomous Vehicles (AV), which can manifest as misdetection errors on the occluded objects. Cooperative perception (CP) solutions based on Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications aim to avoid such issues by cooperatively leveraging additional points of view for the world around the AV. This approach usually requires many sensors, mainly cameras and LiDARs, to be deployed simultaneously in the environment either as part of the road infrastructure or on other traffic vehicles. However, implementing a large number of sensor models in a virtual simulation pipeline is often prohibitively computationally expensive. Therefore, in this paper, we rely on extending Perception Error Models (PEMs) to efficiently implement such cooperative perception solutions along with the errors and uncertainties associated with them. We demonstrate the approach by comparing the safety achievable by an AV challenged with a traffic scenario where occlusion is the primary cause of a potential collision.@en

The worldwide development of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) has also encouraged the use of software simulators for virtual testing of AVs. However, the effectiveness of the AV simulators is constrained by numerous challenges, such as their computational cost and lack of fidelity in specific areas. In this paper, we describe the modality of virtual testing and its benefits for AV development and validation. Moreover, we summarize and provide an overview of the state-of-the-art AV simulators, their limitations, and the current directions toward improvement.@en