Diverse and Adaptive Behavior Curriculum for Autonomous Driving: A Student-Teacher Framework with Multi-Agent RL

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Abouelazm, Ahmed, Ratz, Johannes, Schörner, Philip, Zöllner, J. Marius
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Abouelazm, Ahmed
Ratz, Johannes
Schörner, Philip
Zöllner, J. Marius
author_facet Abouelazm, Ahmed
Ratz, Johannes
Schörner, Philip
Zöllner, J. Marius
contents Autonomous driving faces challenges in navigating complex real-world traffic, requiring safe handling of both common and critical scenarios. Reinforcement learning (RL), a prominent method in end-to-end driving, enables agents to learn through trial and error in simulation. However, RL training often relies on rule-based traffic scenarios, limiting generalization. Additionally, current scenario generation methods focus heavily on critical scenarios, neglecting a balance with routine driving behaviors. Curriculum learning, which progressively trains agents on increasingly complex tasks, is a promising approach to improving the robustness and coverage of RL driving policies. However, existing research mainly emphasizes manually designed curricula, focusing on scenery and actor placement rather than traffic behavior dynamics. This work introduces a novel student-teacher framework for automatic curriculum learning. The teacher, a graph-based multi-agent RL component, adaptively generates traffic behaviors across diverse difficulty levels. An adaptive mechanism adjusts task difficulty based on student performance, ensuring exposure to behaviors ranging from common to critical. The student, though exchangeable, is realized as a deep RL agent with partial observability, reflecting real-world perception constraints. Results demonstrate the teacher's ability to generate diverse traffic behaviors. The student, trained with automatic curricula, outperformed agents trained on rule-based traffic, achieving higher rewards and exhibiting balanced, assertive driving.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_19146
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Diverse and Adaptive Behavior Curriculum for Autonomous Driving: A Student-Teacher Framework with Multi-Agent RL
Abouelazm, Ahmed
Ratz, Johannes
Schörner, Philip
Zöllner, J. Marius
Robotics
Machine Learning
Autonomous driving faces challenges in navigating complex real-world traffic, requiring safe handling of both common and critical scenarios. Reinforcement learning (RL), a prominent method in end-to-end driving, enables agents to learn through trial and error in simulation. However, RL training often relies on rule-based traffic scenarios, limiting generalization. Additionally, current scenario generation methods focus heavily on critical scenarios, neglecting a balance with routine driving behaviors. Curriculum learning, which progressively trains agents on increasingly complex tasks, is a promising approach to improving the robustness and coverage of RL driving policies. However, existing research mainly emphasizes manually designed curricula, focusing on scenery and actor placement rather than traffic behavior dynamics. This work introduces a novel student-teacher framework for automatic curriculum learning. The teacher, a graph-based multi-agent RL component, adaptively generates traffic behaviors across diverse difficulty levels. An adaptive mechanism adjusts task difficulty based on student performance, ensuring exposure to behaviors ranging from common to critical. The student, though exchangeable, is realized as a deep RL agent with partial observability, reflecting real-world perception constraints. Results demonstrate the teacher's ability to generate diverse traffic behaviors. The student, trained with automatic curricula, outperformed agents trained on rule-based traffic, achieving higher rewards and exhibiting balanced, assertive driving.
title Diverse and Adaptive Behavior Curriculum for Autonomous Driving: A Student-Teacher Framework with Multi-Agent RL
topic Robotics
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19146