Deep reinforcement learning-based longitudinal control strategy for automated vehicles at signalised intersections

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Kumar, Pankaj, Mishra, Aditya, Chakraborty, Pranamesh, Peruru, Subrahmanya Swamy
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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_version_ 1866910941998743552
author Kumar, Pankaj
Mishra, Aditya
Chakraborty, Pranamesh
Peruru, Subrahmanya Swamy
author_facet Kumar, Pankaj
Mishra, Aditya
Chakraborty, Pranamesh
Peruru, Subrahmanya Swamy
contents Developing an autonomous vehicle control strategy for signalised intersections (SI) is one of the challenging tasks due to its inherently complex decision-making process. This study proposes a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) based longitudinal vehicle control strategy at SI. A comprehensive reward function has been formulated with a particular focus on (i) distance headway-based efficiency reward, (ii) decision-making criteria during amber light, and (iii) asymmetric acceleration/ deceleration response, along with the traditional safety and comfort criteria. This reward function has been incorporated with two popular DRL algorithms, Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) and Soft-Actor Critic (SAC), which can handle the continuous action space of acceleration/deceleration. The proposed models have been trained on the combination of real-world leader vehicle (LV) trajectories and simulated trajectories generated using the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) process. The overall performance of the proposed models has been tested using Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) plots and compared with the real-world trajectory data. The results show that the RL models successfully maintain lower distance headway (i.e., higher efficiency) and jerk compared to human-driven vehicles without compromising safety. Further, to assess the robustness of the proposed models, we evaluated the model performance on diverse safety-critical scenarios, in terms of car-following and traffic signal compliance. Both DDPG and SAC models successfully handled the critical scenarios, while the DDPG model showed smoother action profiles compared to the SAC model. Overall, the results confirm that DRL-based longitudinal vehicle control strategy at SI can help to improve traffic safety, efficiency, and comfort.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_08896
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Deep reinforcement learning-based longitudinal control strategy for automated vehicles at signalised intersections
Kumar, Pankaj
Mishra, Aditya
Chakraborty, Pranamesh
Peruru, Subrahmanya Swamy
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
Developing an autonomous vehicle control strategy for signalised intersections (SI) is one of the challenging tasks due to its inherently complex decision-making process. This study proposes a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) based longitudinal vehicle control strategy at SI. A comprehensive reward function has been formulated with a particular focus on (i) distance headway-based efficiency reward, (ii) decision-making criteria during amber light, and (iii) asymmetric acceleration/ deceleration response, along with the traditional safety and comfort criteria. This reward function has been incorporated with two popular DRL algorithms, Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) and Soft-Actor Critic (SAC), which can handle the continuous action space of acceleration/deceleration. The proposed models have been trained on the combination of real-world leader vehicle (LV) trajectories and simulated trajectories generated using the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) process. The overall performance of the proposed models has been tested using Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) plots and compared with the real-world trajectory data. The results show that the RL models successfully maintain lower distance headway (i.e., higher efficiency) and jerk compared to human-driven vehicles without compromising safety. Further, to assess the robustness of the proposed models, we evaluated the model performance on diverse safety-critical scenarios, in terms of car-following and traffic signal compliance. Both DDPG and SAC models successfully handled the critical scenarios, while the DDPG model showed smoother action profiles compared to the SAC model. Overall, the results confirm that DRL-based longitudinal vehicle control strategy at SI can help to improve traffic safety, efficiency, and comfort.
title Deep reinforcement learning-based longitudinal control strategy for automated vehicles at signalised intersections
topic Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.08896