CEE Seminar: The MegaVanderTest: Leveraging the Power of Deep-RL for Mixed-autonomy Traffic Optimization

Abstract: This lecture will present the story of the MegaVanderTest, a test involving 100 self-driving vehicles, which ran the week of November 18, 2022, on I24 in Nashville, TN. The MegaVanderTest is to our knowledge the test which achieved the largest concentration of self-driving vehicles collaboratively controlling traffic on a single stretch of freeway in the history of self-driving vehicles. The lecture will explain the objectives of CIRCLES, a consortium which conducted the MegaVanderTest. 

The talk will first cover the architecture built and deployed by the CIRCLES team. It will present some of the algorithms populating the planning layer of the system, mostly based on optimal control and imitation learning of Kernel-based expert controllers. It will also present some of the algorithms populating the local control regulation layer, based on deep-reinforcement learning and MPC. Finally it will present the way the algorithms had to run in the field, due to the fact that most modern ACC architectures do not allow third party access to some of the sensing equipment other than through inference by proxy of control, and due to the fact that prescribing acceleration is problematic on many vehicles. It will finally show some preliminary results, on the way to our quest: leveraging 1% to 2% of the total flow of vehicles to improve the fuel economy of every car on that freeway on that day (not just ours), by up to 10%. 

Bio: Alexandre M. Bayen is director of CITRIS and the Banatao Institute, associate provost for the Berkeley Space Center, and Liao-Cho Innovation Endowed Chair and professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and of civil and environmental engineering at the UC Berkeley. Bayen conducts research in modeling and control of distributed parameter systems with applications to transportation systems (air traffic control, highway systems) and distribution systems (water distribution networks). His research involves control of systems modeled by partial differential equations, combinatorial optimization, viability theory and optimal control. Bayen is a member of IEEE and the Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). From 2014 - 2021, he served as the director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Berkeley (ITS). He is also a faculty scientist in mechanical engineering, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). 

He received the engineering degree in applied mathematics from the Ecole Polytechnique, France, in 1998, the M.S. and Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University in 1999 and 2004, respectively. He was a visiting researcher at NASA Ames Research Center from 2000 to 2003. Between January 2004 and December 2004, he worked as the research director of the Autonomous Navigation Laboratory at the Laboratoire de Recherches Balistiques et Aerodynamiques, (Ministere de la Defense, Vernon, France), where he holds the rank of major. 

He has been on the faculty at UC Berkeley since 2005. Bayen has authored two books and over 200 articles in peer reviewed journals and conferences. He is the recipient of the Ballhaus Award from Stanford University, 2004, of the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, 2009 and he is a NASA Top 10 Innovators on Water Sustainability, 2010. His projects Mobile Century and Mobile Millennium received the 2008 Best of ITS Award for "Best Innovative Practice," at the ITS World Congress and a TRANNY Award from the California Transportation Foundation, 2009. Mobile Millennium has been featured more than 200 times in the media, including TV channels and radio stations (CBS, NBC, ABC, CNET, NPR, KGO, BBC), and in the popular press (Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, LA Times). Bayen is the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) award from the White House, 2010. He is also the recipient of the Okawa Research Grant Award, the Ruberti Prize from the IEEE, and the Huber Prize from the ASCE.