PERFORMANCE TESTING FOR ROBOTIC SYSTEMS

Herein, a “perception statistical performance model” (PSPM) for modelling a perception slice of a runtime stack for an autonomous vehicle or other robotic system may be used e.g. for safety/performance testing. A PSPM is configured to: receive a computed perception ground truth; determine from the perception ground truth, based on a set of learned parameters, a probabilistic perception uncertainty distribution, the parameters learned from a set of actual perception outputs generated using the perception slice to be modelled. The modelled perception slice includes an online error estimator, and the computer system is configured to use the PSPM to obtain a predicted online error estimate for the perception output in response to the perception ground truth. This recognizes that online perception error estimates may, themselves, be subject to error.