{"title":"Safe Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning for the Management of Autonomous Connected Vehicles at Future Intersections","authors":"Rui Zhao;Kui Wang;Yun Li;Yuze Fan;Fei Gao;Zhenhai Gao","doi":"10.1109/TPDS.2025.3580092","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"As Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (vehicle) evolve, Autonomous Intersection Management (AIM) systems are emerging to enable safe, efficient traffic flow at urban intersections without traffic signals. However, existing AIM systems, whether based on traditional optimization control methods or machine learning, suffer from low computational efficiency and a lack of robustness in ensuring safety, respectively. To overcome these limitations, we propose an innovative AIM scheme rooted in Safe Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning (MADRL). We initially model the safe MADRL problem as a constrained Markov game (CMG) and tackle it with our multi-agent projective constrained policy optimization (MAPCPO). This method first optimizes policy updates within the Kullback-Leibler divergence trust region to maximize performance, and then projects these optimized policies onto the bounds of risk constraints, thus ensuring safety. Building on this, we introduce a Risk-Bounded RL for Autonomous Intersection Management (RbRL-AIM) algorithm. This algorithm adopts an architecture that consists of an LSTM based policy neural network, a reward value network, and a risk neural network. These components, through the MAPCPO policy, enable continuous learning from complex and random intersection traffic environments, thereby facilitating the safe, efficient, and smooth control of vehicles at intersections. Our method is validated in a CARLA simulation, showing significant gains in computational and traffic efficiency over baseline optimization control methods. Compared to non-safety-aware MADRL methods, our approach achieves zero collisions and improved ride comfort.","PeriodicalId":13257,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems","volume":"36 8","pages":"1744-1761"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11037520/","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, THEORY & METHODS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
As Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (vehicle) evolve, Autonomous Intersection Management (AIM) systems are emerging to enable safe, efficient traffic flow at urban intersections without traffic signals. However, existing AIM systems, whether based on traditional optimization control methods or machine learning, suffer from low computational efficiency and a lack of robustness in ensuring safety, respectively. To overcome these limitations, we propose an innovative AIM scheme rooted in Safe Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning (MADRL). We initially model the safe MADRL problem as a constrained Markov game (CMG) and tackle it with our multi-agent projective constrained policy optimization (MAPCPO). This method first optimizes policy updates within the Kullback-Leibler divergence trust region to maximize performance, and then projects these optimized policies onto the bounds of risk constraints, thus ensuring safety. Building on this, we introduce a Risk-Bounded RL for Autonomous Intersection Management (RbRL-AIM) algorithm. This algorithm adopts an architecture that consists of an LSTM based policy neural network, a reward value network, and a risk neural network. These components, through the MAPCPO policy, enable continuous learning from complex and random intersection traffic environments, thereby facilitating the safe, efficient, and smooth control of vehicles at intersections. Our method is validated in a CARLA simulation, showing significant gains in computational and traffic efficiency over baseline optimization control methods. Compared to non-safety-aware MADRL methods, our approach achieves zero collisions and improved ride comfort.
期刊介绍:
IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS) is published monthly. It publishes a range of papers, comments on previously published papers, and survey articles that deal with the parallel and distributed systems research areas of current importance to our readers. Particular areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
a) Parallel and distributed algorithms, focusing on topics such as: models of computation; numerical, combinatorial, and data-intensive parallel algorithms, scalability of algorithms and data structures for parallel and distributed systems, communication and synchronization protocols, network algorithms, scheduling, and load balancing.
b) Applications of parallel and distributed computing, including computational and data-enabled science and engineering, big data applications, parallel crowd sourcing, large-scale social network analysis, management of big data, cloud and grid computing, scientific and biomedical applications, mobile computing, and cyber-physical systems.
c) Parallel and distributed architectures, including architectures for instruction-level and thread-level parallelism; design, analysis, implementation, fault resilience and performance measurements of multiple-processor systems; multicore processors, heterogeneous many-core systems; petascale and exascale systems designs; novel big data architectures; special purpose architectures, including graphics processors, signal processors, network processors, media accelerators, and other special purpose processors and accelerators; impact of technology on architecture; network and interconnect architectures; parallel I/O and storage systems; architecture of the memory hierarchy; power-efficient and green computing architectures; dependable architectures; and performance modeling and evaluation.
d) Parallel and distributed software, including parallel and multicore programming languages and compilers, runtime systems, operating systems, Internet computing and web services, resource management including green computing, middleware for grids, clouds, and data centers, libraries, performance modeling and evaluation, parallel programming paradigms, and programming environments and tools.