Reinforcement Learning-based Traffic Control: Mitigating the Adverse Impacts of Control Transitions

Abstract

An important aspect of automated driving is to handle situations where it fails or is not allowed in specific traffic situations. This case study explores means, by which control transitions in a mixed autonomy system can be organized in order to minimize their adverse impact on traffic flow. We assess a number of different approaches for a coordinated management of transitions, covering classic traffic management paradigms and AI-driven controls. We demonstrate that they yield excellent results when compared to a do-nothing scenario. This text further details a model for control transitions that is the basis for the simulation study presented. The results encourage the deployment of reinforcement learning on the control problem for a scenario with mandatory take-over requests.