SEGAC: Sample Efficient Generalized Actor Critic for the Stochastic On-Time Arrival Problem

• Main Authors: GUO, Honglian, HE, Zhi, SHENG, Wenda, CAO, Zhiguang, ZHOU, Yingjie, GAO, Weinan
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2024
• Subjects: Gaussian distribution; Generalized actor critic; Navigation; Optimization; Real-time systems; Reliability; Routing; sample efficiency; stochastic on-time arrival (SOTA); Transportation; variance reduction; Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering; Theory and Algorithms
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/8704; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/9707/viewcontent/T_ITS_SEGAC_final.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This paper studies the problem in transportation networks and introduces a novel reinforcement learning-based algorithm, namely. Different from almost all canonical sota solutions, which are usually computationally expensive and lack generalizability to unforeseen destination nodes, segac offers the following appealing characteristics. segac updates the ego vehicle’s navigation policy in a sample efficient manner, reduces the variance of both value network and policy network during training, and is automatically adaptive to new destinations. Furthermore, the pre-trained segac policy network enables its real-time decision-making ability within seconds, outperforming state-of-the-art sota algorithms in simulations across various transportation networks. We also successfully deploy segac to two real metropolitan transportation networks, namely Chengdu and Beijing, using real traffic data, with satisfying results.