simulators

Definition

Stand-ins for a real environment that let you run far more trials than reality allows, without breaking hardware or exposing people to a half-trained policy. They are central to robotics, autonomous driving, and increasingly to evaluating interactive agents. The permanent caveat is the sim-to-real gap: a policy can exploit inaccuracies in the simulator and score well on artifacts that do not exist outside it, so simulator results are necessary but not sufficient.

Explainers using this term

• Paper Walkthrough: StudentSim — Training a Simulator That Is Actually *That* StudentStudentSim: Training LLM-based Student Simulators