Abstract

Lagrangian control at large and local scales in mixed autonomy traffic flow

Alexandre Bayen
University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley)

This talk investigates Lagrangian (mobile) control of traffic flow at local scale (vehicular level). The question of how will self-driving vehicles will change traffic flow patterns is investigated. We describe approaches based on deep reinforcement learning presented in the context of enabling mixed-autonomy mobility. The talk explores the gradual and complex integration of automated vehicles into the existing traffic system. We present the potential impact of a small fraction of automated vehicles on low-level traffic flow dynamics, using novel techniques in model-free deep reinforcement learning, in which the automated vehicles act as mobile (Lagrangian) controllers to traffic flow.

Illustrative examples will be presented in the context of a new open-source computational platform called FLOW, which integrates state of the art microsimulation tools with deep-RL libraries on AWS EC2. Interesting behavior of mixed autonomy traffic will be revealed in the context of emergent behavior of traffic: https://flow-project.github.io/