arXiv Machine Learning By Sungyong Chung, Yanlin Zhang, Nachuan Li, Dana Monzer, Alireza Talebpour

An Empirical Markov Chain Car-Following (MC-CF) Model

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The paper introduces the Markov Chain Car‑Following (MC‑CF) model, an empirical probabilistic approach that represents car‑following as a Markov process and samples accelerations from empirical distributions within discretized state bins. Evaluation on the Waymo Open Motion Dataset shows that MC‑CF variants outperform physics‑based baselines and compete with modern data‑driven methods in both one‑step and open‑loop trajectory prediction. Zero‑shot transfer to the Naturalistic Phoenix dataset and microscopic ring‑road simulations demonstrate cross‑domain generalization and scalability, with the model reducing collisions and reproducing naturalistic shockwave propagation.

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