V2I Connectivity-Based Dynamic Queue-Jump Lane for Emergency Vehicles: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach
This work addresses traffic congestion delays for emergency vehicles in cities, representing an incremental improvement through coordination of connected vehicles.
The paper tackled the problem of emergency vehicle (EMV) service delays due to urban traffic congestion by proposing a dynamic queue-jump lane (DQJL) system using V2I connectivity and deep reinforcement learning, resulting in approximately 15% savings in EMV passing time compared to a benchmark system.
Emergency vehicle (EMV) service is a key function of cities and is exceedingly challenging due to urban traffic congestion. A main reason behind EMV service delay is the lack of communication and cooperation between vehicles blocking EMVs. In this paper, we study the improvement of EMV service under V2I connectivity. We consider the establishment of dynamic queue jump lanes (DQJLs) based on real-time coordination of connected vehicles. We develop a novel Markov decision process formulation for the DQJL problem, which explicitly accounts for the uncertainty of drivers' reaction to approaching EMVs. We propose a deep neural network-based reinforcement learning algorithm that efficiently computes the optimal coordination instructions. We also validate our approach on a micro-simulation testbed using Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO). Validation results show that with our proposed methodology, the centralized control system saves approximately 15\% EMV passing time than the benchmark system.