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Intelligent traffic light control (ITLC) algorithms are very efficient for relieving traffic congestion. Recently, many decentralized multi-agent traffic light control algorithms are proposed. These researches mainly focus on improving reinforcement learning method and coordination method. But, as all the agents need to communicate while coordinating with each other, the communication details should be improved as well. To guarantee communication effectiveness, two aspect should be considered. Firstly, a traffic condition description method need to be designed. By using this method, traffic condition can be described simply and clearly. Secondly, synchronization should be considered. As different intersections have different cycle lengths and message sending event happens at the end of each traffic signal cycle, every agent will receive messages of other agents at different time. So it is hard for an agent to decide which message is the latest one and the most valuable. Apart from communication details, reinforcement learning algorithm used for traffic signal timing should also be improved. In the traditional reinforcement learning based ITLC algorithms, either queue length of congested cars or waiting time of these cars is considered while calculating reward value. But, both of them are very important. So a new reward calculation method is needed. To solve all these problems, in this paper, a new ITLC algorithm is proposed. To improve communication efficiency, this algorithm adopts a new message sending and processing method. Besides, to measure traffic congestion in a more reasonable way, a new reward calculation method is proposed and used. This method takes both waiting time and queue length into consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperation between intersections in large-scale road networks is critical in traffic congestion. Currently, most traffic signals cooperate via pre-defined timing phases, which is extremely inefficient in real-time traffic scenarios. Most existing studies on multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) traffic signal control have focused on designing efficient communication methods, but have ignored the importance of how agents interact in cooperative communication. To achieve more efficient cooperation among traffic signals and alleviate urban traffic congestion, this study constructs a Graph Cooperation Q-learning Network Traffic Signal Control (GCQN-TSC) model, which is a graph cooperation network with an embedded self-attention mechanism that enables agents to adjust their attention in real time according to the dynamic traffic flow information, perceive the traffic environment quickly and effectively in a larger range, and help agents achieve more effective collaboration. Moreover, the Deep Graph Q-learning (DGQ) algorithm is proposed in this model to optimize the traffic signal control strategy according to the spatio-temporal characteristics of different traffic scenes and provide the optimal signal phase for each intersection. This study also integrates the ecological traffic concept into MARL traffic signal control, which aims to reduce traffic exhaust emissions. Finally, the proposed GCQN-TSC is experimentally validated both in a synthetic traffic grid and a real-world traffic network using the SUMO simulator. The experimental results show that GCQN-TSC outperforms other traffic signal control methods in almost all performance metrics, including average queue length and waiting time, as it can aggregate information acquired from collaborative agents and make network-level signal optimization decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic lights are an important controlling factor in traffic flows, and good policies will facilitate traffic congestion. A car's waiting time is highly related to the period in which the traffic lights are green or red; thus, a proper controlling policy reduces the waiting time and speeds up the car movement. Emergency vehicles always have a higher priority than other cars and need to reach their destination faster. In the last decade, a lot of research has been done to solve the traffic light scheduling issue using artificial intelligence techniques. Reinforcement learning with simulating human learning has the outstanding performance to solve complex problems, such as traffic lights control. In this study, a deep reinforcement learning traffic light control was implemented at a crossroad using real-time traffic information with an emphasis on emergency vehicles. The agent learns to adjust its policies to prioritize the emergency cars over the other cars. The results show less waiting time and speed up the cars' movement. It also indicates the emergency vehicles will cross the intersection with the least delay. With 200 to 600 cars and one emergency vehicle, the average delay decreases 2–16% in total using reinforcement learning. Considering more emergency vehicles, there is a 27–40% decrease in average delay for emergency vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]