Decentralised multi-agent coordination for real-time railway traffic management

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: D'Amato, Leo, Pellegrini, Paola, Trianni, Vito
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author D'Amato, Leo
Pellegrini, Paola
Trianni, Vito
author_facet D'Amato, Leo
Pellegrini, Paola
Trianni, Vito
contents The real-time Railway Traffic Management Problem (rtRTMP) is a challenging optimisation problem in railway transportation. It involves the efficient management of train movements while minimising delay propagation caused by unforeseen perturbations due to, e.g, temporary speed limitations or signal failures. This paper re-frames the rtRTMP as a multi-agent coordination problem and formalises it as a Distributed Constraint Optimisation Problem (DCOP) to explore its potential for decentralised solutions. We propose a novel coordination algorithm that extends the widely known Distributed Stochastic Algorithm (DSA), allowing trains to self-organise and resolve scheduling conflicts. The performance of our algorithm is compared to a classical DSA through extensive simulations on a synthetic dataset reproducing diverse problem configurations. Results show that our approach achieves significant improvements in solution quality and convergence speed, demonstrating its effectiveness and scalability in managing large-scale railway networks. Beyond the railway domain, this framework can have broader applicability in autonomous systems, such as self-driving vehicles or inter-satellite coordination.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_08324
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Decentralised multi-agent coordination for real-time railway traffic management
D'Amato, Leo
Pellegrini, Paola
Trianni, Vito
Multiagent Systems
The real-time Railway Traffic Management Problem (rtRTMP) is a challenging optimisation problem in railway transportation. It involves the efficient management of train movements while minimising delay propagation caused by unforeseen perturbations due to, e.g, temporary speed limitations or signal failures. This paper re-frames the rtRTMP as a multi-agent coordination problem and formalises it as a Distributed Constraint Optimisation Problem (DCOP) to explore its potential for decentralised solutions. We propose a novel coordination algorithm that extends the widely known Distributed Stochastic Algorithm (DSA), allowing trains to self-organise and resolve scheduling conflicts. The performance of our algorithm is compared to a classical DSA through extensive simulations on a synthetic dataset reproducing diverse problem configurations. Results show that our approach achieves significant improvements in solution quality and convergence speed, demonstrating its effectiveness and scalability in managing large-scale railway networks. Beyond the railway domain, this framework can have broader applicability in autonomous systems, such as self-driving vehicles or inter-satellite coordination.
title Decentralised multi-agent coordination for real-time railway traffic management
topic Multiagent Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.08324