Deploying Traffic Smoothing Cruise Controllers Learned from Trajectory Data

Nathan Lichtle, Eugene Vinitsky, Matthew Nice, Benjamin Seibold, Dan Work, Alexandre M. Bayen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Autonomous vehicle-based traffic smoothing con-trollers are often not transferred to real-world use due to challenges in calibrating many-agent traffic simulators. We show a pipeline to sidestep such calibration issues by collecting trajectory data and learning controllers directly from trajectory data that are then deployed zero-shot onto the highway. We construct a dataset of 772.3 kilometers of recorded drives on the I-24. We then construct a simple simulator using the recorded drives as the lead vehicle in front of a simulated platoon consisting of one autonomous vehicle and five human followers. Using policy-gradient methods with an asymmetric critic to learn the controller, we show that we are able to improve average MPG by 11% in simulation on congested trajectories. We deploy this controller to a mixed platoon of 4 autonomous Toyota RAV-4's and 7 human drivers in a validation experiment and demonstrate that the expected time-gap of the controller is maintained in the real world test. Finally, we release the driving dataset [1], the simulator, and the trained controller at https://github.com/nathanlct/trajectory-training-icra.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2022 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2022
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages2884-2890
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)9781728196817
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022
Event39th IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2022 - Philadelphia, United States
Duration: May 23 2022May 27 2022

Publication series

NameProceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
ISSN (Print)1050-4729

Conference

Conference39th IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2022
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPhiladelphia
Period5/23/225/27/22

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering
  • Artificial Intelligence

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Deploying Traffic Smoothing Cruise Controllers Learned from Trajectory Data'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this