Recent advances in combining deep learning and Reinforcement Learning have shown a promising path for designing new control agents that can learn optimal policies for challenging control tasks. These new methods address the main limitations of conventional Reinforcement Learning methods such as customized feature engineering and small action state space dimension requirements. In this paper, we leverage one of the state-of-the-art Reinforcement Learning methods, known as Trust Region Policy Optimization, to tackle intersection management for autonomous vehicles. We show that using this method, we can perform fine-grained acceleration control of autonomous vehicles in a grid street plan to achieve a global design objective.
presented an approach in which the Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) systems are leveraged to minimize delays and prevent clashes @cite_3 . In this approach, the intersection controller communicates with the vehicles to recommend the optimal speed profile based on the vehicle's characteristics, motion data, weather conditions and intersection properties. Additionally, an optimization problem is solved to minimize the total difference of actual arrival times at the Intersection and the optimum times subject to conflict-free temporal constraints.
@cite_3
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Recently several artificial intelligence labs have suggested the use of fully equipped vehicles with the capability of sensing the surrounding environment to enhance roadway safety. As a result, it is anticipated in the future that many vehicles will be autonomous and thus there is a need to optimize the movement of these vehicles. This paper presents a new tool for optimizing the movements of autonomous vehicles through intersections: iCACC. The main concept of the proposed tool is to control vehicle trajectories using Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) systems to avoid collisions and minimize intersection delay. Simulations were executed to compare conventional signal control with iCACC considering two measures of effectiveness - delay and fuel consumption. Savings in delay and fuel consumption in the range of 91 and 82 percent relative to conventional signal control were demonstrated, respectively. Under the Connected Vehicles (CV) environment, it is possible to create a Cooperative Vehicle Intersection Control (CVIC) system that enables cooperation between vehicles and infrastructure for effective intersection operations and management when all vehicles are fully automated. Assuming such a CVIC environment, this paper proposed a CVIC algorithm that does not require a traffic signal. The CVIC algorithm was designed to manipulate individual vehicles' maneuvers so that vehicles can safely cross the intersection without colliding with other vehicles. By eliminating the potential overlaps of vehicular trajectories coming from all conflicting approaches at the intersection, the CVIC algorithm seeks a safe maneuver for every vehicle approaching the intersection and manipulates each of them. An additional algorithm was designed to deal with the system failure cases resulting from inevitable trajectory overlaps at the intersection and infeasible solutions. A simulation-based case study implemented on a hypothetical four-way single-lane approach intersection under varying congestion conditions showed that the CVIC algorithm significantly improved intersection performance compared with conventional actuated intersection control: 99 and 33 of stop delay and total travel time reductions, respectively, were achieved. In addition, the CVIC algorithm significantly improved air quality and energy savings: 44 reductions of CO2 and 44 savings of fuel consumption. Recently, several artificial intelligence labs have suggested the use of fully driverless vehicles with the capability of sensing the surrounding environment to enhance the roadway safety. The idea of having fully automated vehicles running in streets was inapplicable for many years until recently when researchers succeeded in releasing fully automated vehicles (without human drivers). Consequently, the paper develops a heuristic optimization algorithm for driverless vehicles at unsignalized intersections using a multi-agent system. The proposed system models the driverless vehicles as autonomous agents controlled by the intersection controller (manager agent). The input information of the system consists of vehicles’ current location, speed and acceleration in addition to the surrounding environment (weather, intersection characteristics, etc.). The intersection controller processes the input information using a built-in simulator: “OSDI” (Optimization Simulator for Driverless vehicles at Intersections). The simulator objective is to optimize the movements of vehicles to reduce the total delay time for the entire intersection and prevent crashes simultaneously. Thereafter, the intersection controller uses the simulator output for controlling the speed profile of the driverless vehicles within the intersection study zone. The proposed system is compared to two different intersection control scenarios: an All-way stop control (AWSC) and an Intersection manager with built-in OSDI. For both scenarios, it is assumed that there are four driverless vehicles (one vehicle per approach) willing to cross a four-legged unsignalized intersection concurrently. The results show using Monte Carlo simulation show that the proposed system reduces the total delay by 35 seconds on average compared to traditional AWSC. This research is considered as a first step in developing an unmanned vehicle technology system. In earlier work, we addressed the problem of coordinating online an increasing number of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) crossing two adjacent intersections in an urban area. The analytical solution, however, did not consider the state and control constraints. In this paper, we present the complete Hamiltonian analysis including state and control constraints. In addition, we present conditions that do not allow the rear-end collision avoidance constraint to become active at any time inside the control zone. The complete analytical solution, when it exists, allows the vehicles to cross the intersection without the use of traffic lights and under the hard constraint of collision avoidance. The effectiveness of the proposed solution is validated through simulation in a single intersection and it is shown that coordination of CAVs can reduce significantly both fuel consumption and travel time.