ADDT -- A Digital Twin Framework for Proactive Safety Validation in Autonomous Driving Systems

Abstract

Autonomous driving systems continue to face safety-critical failures, often triggered by rare and unpredictable corner cases that evade conventional testing. We present the Autonomous Driving Digital Twin (ADDT) framework, a high-fidelity simulation platform designed to proactively identify hidden faults, evaluate real-time performance, and validate safety before deployment. ADDT combines realistic digital models of driving environments, vehicle dynamics, sensor behavior, and fault conditions to enable scalable, scenario-rich stress-testing under diverse and adverse conditions. It supports adaptive exploration of edge cases using reinforcement-driven techniques, uncovering failure modes that physical road testing often misses. By shifting from reactive debugging to proactive simulation-driven validation, ADDT enables a more rigorous and transparent approach to autonomous vehicle safety engineering. To accelerate adoption and facilitate industry-wide safety improvements, the entire ADDT framework has been released as open-source software, providing developers with an accessible and extensible tool for comprehensive safety testing at scale.