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Learning to Change: Choreographing Mixed Traffic Through Lateral Control and Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning

2024/03/21 by Dawei Wang, Wang, Dawei, Weizi Li +4
Neuroscience · Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · #Action Observation and Synchronization #Embodied and Extended Cognition #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Multiagent Systems (cs.MA) #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Robotics (cs.RO)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2403.14879

openalex publication_date 2024/03/21 · openalex created_date 2024/03/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

The management of mixed traffic that consists of robot vehicles (RVs) and human-driven vehicles (HVs) at complex intersections presents a multifaceted challenge. Traditional signal controls often struggle to adapt to dynamic traffic conditions and heterogeneous vehicle types. Recent advancements have turned to strategies based on reinforcement learning (RL), leveraging its model-free nature, real-time operation, and generalizability over different scenarios. We introduce a hierarchical RL framework to manage mixed traffic through precise longitudinal and lateral control of RVs. Our proposed hierarchical framework combines the state-of-the-art mixed traffic control algorithm as a high level decision maker to improve the performance and robustness of the whole system. Our experiments demonstrate that the framework can reduce the average waiting time by up to 54% compared to the state-of-the-art mixed traffic control method. When the RV penetration rate exceeds 60%, our technique consistently outperforms conventional traffic signal control programs in terms of the average waiting time for all vehicles at the intersection.

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