Modelling motorized and non-motorized vehicle conflicts using multiagent inverse reinforcement learning approach

Abstract

Microsimulation models are effective for analysing road users’ interaction behaviour and assessing different facilities’ performance. However, only a few studies have developed simulation models for studying motorized and non-motorized vehicles conflicts. This is likely due to mixed traffic’s complexity and heterogeneity and the difficulty in accurately capturing road users’ avoidance maneuver. This study aims to adopt a multiagent simulation model to replicate road users’ microscopic behaviour and collision avoidance mechanisms in traffic conflict scenarios. Road users’ reward functions are recovered by the multiagent inverse reinforcement learning approach. The multiagent Actor-Critic deep learning algorithm is used to predict road users’ evasive action and assess their optimal policies. The findings demonstrate that the multiagent simulation model provides highly accurate predictions of road users’ trajectories and collision avoidance strategies. Furthermore, the results demonstrate a strong correlation between the predicted traffic conflict indicator from the simulated trajectories and that from the actual trajectories.

KEYWORDS:

• Mixed traffic conflict modelling
• microscopic simulation
• multiagent models
• time to collision
• reward functions

Acknowledgments

The work of the first author was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 2572023CT21).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).