Context-Aware Multiagent Broad Reinforcement Learning for Mixed Pedestrian-Vehicle Adaptive Traffic Light Control

Abstract

Efficient traffic light control is a critical part of realizing smart transportation. In particular, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithms that use deep neural networks (DNNs) have superior autonomous decision-making ability. Most existing work has applied DRL to control traffic lights intelligently. In this article, we propose a novel context-aware multiagent broad reinforcement learning (CAMABRL) approach based on broad reinforcement learning (BRL) for mixed pedestrian-vehicle adaptive traffic light control (ATLC). CAMABRL exploits the broad learning system (BLS) established in a flat network structure to make decisions instead of a deep network structure. Unlike previous works that consider the attributes of vehicles, CAMABRL also takes the states of pedestrians waiting at the intersection into consideration. Combining with the context-aware mechanism that utilizes the states of adjacent agents and potential state information captured by the long short-term memory (LSTM) network, agents can make farsighted decisions to alleviate traffic congestion. The experimental results show that CAMABRL is superior to several state-of-the-art multiagent reinforcement learning (MARL) methods.