arXiv Machine Learning

Learning to Incentivise: Using Reinforcement Learning for Sustainable Urban Mobility

The paper proposes a multi‑agent reinforcement learning framework that dynamically allocates incentives to drivers, encouraging them to take alternative routes. By doing so, it reduces total travel time by up to 16% and CO₂ emissions by 9% under an unlimited budget, while revealing a trade‑off between the two objectives. The study demonstrates that a carefully weighted multi‑objective function can improve both travel time and emissions beyond baseline levels.

arXiv AI
Jul 1

Smart charging of large fleets of Electric Vehicles: Independent Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning approaches

arXiv:2606. 31347v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The electrification of transportation through electric vehicles introduces new challenges for power grid management, such as increased peak demand, voltage fluctuations, line overloads, and the integration of variable renewable energy sources.

By Xavier Rate, Eloann Le Guern, Rapha\"el F\'eraud, Fatma Salem, Melissa Chiknoun, Eymeric Giabicani, Mehdi Feki, Patrick Maill\'e, Guy Camilleri, Anne Blavette, Hamid Benhamed
arXiv AI
Oct 5

LLM-Guided Reinforcement Learning with Representative Agents for Traffic Modeling

The paper proposes a scalable traffic modeling approach that uses a single representative large language model (LLM) agent for each homogeneous traveler group, rather than one LLM per traveler. The representative agent maintains a mixed strategy over routes, updates it daily based on positive reinforcement signals, and uses a tunable step size to adjust its strategy. This design improves scalability, stabilizes learning, and produces interpretable dynamics that reproduce realistic behavioral patterns such as the decoy effect and income‑based willingness‑to‑pay differences.

By Hanlin Sun, Jiayang Li
arXiv AI
Oct 12

Collective Autonomous Vehicle Routing Needs Social Awareness for Coexistence with Human Drivers

The paper proposes adding a social component—marginal cost—to autonomous vehicle (AV) routing rewards to account for the impact of AVs on human-driven vehicles (HDVs). Using multi-agent reinforcement learning on real-world networks, the authors show that this social reward reduces HDV travel time increases and improves overall system performance compared to purely selfish AV routing. A scalable approach limits counterfactual simulations to the most influential AVs, maintaining performance while cutting computational cost.

By Anastasia Psarou, Mikolaj Rams, Blazej Torbus, Rafal Kucharski
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 27

Simulating Cognitive Smart Freight Corridors with Agent-Based Models and Reinforcement Learning

The paper introduces an agent‑based modeling framework that integrates a physical infrastructure layer, a V2X connectivity layer, and a decision layer using reinforcement learning and multi‑agent reinforcement learning to simulate smart freight corridors. Three scenarios—Baseline, Assisted, and Cognitive—are evaluated on throughput, congestion, energy, emissions, and robustness, with the Cognitive scenario outperforming the baseline in throughput and congestion, and the Assisted scenario achieving energy savings via platooning. Sensitivity analysis shows that the smart corridor’s throughput advantage grows under high demand and that MARL coordination better utilizes fixed charging capacity than rule‑based methods.

By Madelaine Martinez-Ferguson, Chun Wang, Mustafa Can Camur, Xueping Li
arXiv AI
Oct 12

Preference-Conditioned Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning for Tactical Decision Making in Heavy-Duty Vehicles

The paper introduces a preference-conditioned multi-objective reinforcement learning framework for tactical decision making in heavy-duty vehicles. It explicitly models safety, energy efficiency, and time efficiency as separate objectives and uses Generalized Policy Improvement and Proximal Policy Optimization to learn policies that approximate the Pareto front across these conflicting goals. Experiments in a scalable highway traffic simulation show smooth, interpretable Pareto fronts and meaningful trade-offs, with the policy enabling behavior transitions without retraining.

By Deepthi Pathare, Leo Laine, Morteza Haghir Chehreghani
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 2

Scalable Ride-Sourcing Vehicle Rebalancing with Service Accessibility Guarantee: A Constrained Mean-Field Reinforcement Learning Approach

arXiv:2503. 24183v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The expansion of ride-sourcing services such as Uber and Lyft has reshaped urban transportation by offering flexible, on-demand mobility via mobile applications.

By Matej Jusup, Kenan Zhang, Zhiyuan Hu, Barna P\'asztor, Andreas Krause, Francesco Corman
arXiv AI
Jun 2

TrafficClaw: A Generalizable LLM Agent in the Unified Physical Environment for Urban Traffic Control

arXiv:2604. 17456v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents have shown strong capabilities in long-horizon reasoning, tool use, and decision-making in digital environments, yet extending them to physically grounded systems remains challenging.

By Siqi Lai, Pan Zhang, Yuping Zhou, Jindong Han, Yansong Ning, Hao Liu