Trip Planning for Autonomous Vehicles with Wireless Data Transfer Needs Using Reinforcement Learning

With recent advancements in the field of communications and the Internet of Things, vehicles are becoming more aware of their environment and are evolving towards full autonomy. Vehicular communication opens up the possibility for vehicle-to-infrastructure interaction, where vehicles could share information with components such as cameras, traffic lights, and signage that support a countrys road system. As a result, vehicles are becoming more than just a means of transportation; they are collecting, processing, and transmitting massive amounts of data used to make driving safer and more convenient. With 5G cellular networks and beyond, there is going to be more data bandwidth available on our roads, but it may be heterogeneous because of limitations like line of sight, infrastructure, and heterogeneous traffic on the road. This paper addresses the problem of route planning for autonomous vehicles in urban areas accounting for both driving time and data transfer needs. We propose a novel reinforcement learning solution that prioritizes high bandwidth roads to meet a vehicles data transfer requirement, while also minimizing driving time. We compare this approach to traffic-unaware and bandwidth-unaware baselines to show how much better it performs under heterogeneous traffic. This solution could be used as a starting point to understand what good policies look like, which could potentially yield faster, more efficient heuristics in the future.Comment: 7 pages, 12 figure

Software-defined Architecture for Urban Regional Traffic Signal Control

Regional Traffic Signal Control (RTSC) is believed to be a promising approach to alleviate urban traffic congestion. However, the current ecology of RTSC platforms is too closed to meet the needs of urban development, which has also seriously affected their own development. Therefore, the paper proposes virtualizing the traffic signal control devices to create software-defined RTSC systems, which can provide a better innovation platform for coordinated control of urban transportation. The novel architecture for RTSC is presented in detail, and microscopic traffic simulation experiments are designed and conducted to verify the feasibility.</p