An autonomous control system generates synthetic data that reflect simulated environments. Specifically, the synthetic data is a representation of sensor data of the simulated environment from the perspective of one or more sensors. The system generates synthetic data by introducing one or more simulated modifications to sensor data captured by the sensors or by simulating the sensor data for a virtual environment. The autonomous control system uses the synthetic data to train computer models for various detection and control algorithms. In general, this allows autonomous control systems to augment training data to improve performance of computer models, simulate scenarios that are not included in existing training data, and/or train computer models that remove unwanted effects or occlusions from sensor data of the environment.