Vehicle Simulation Algorithm for Observations with Variable Dimensions Based on Deep Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

Vehicle simulation algorithms play a crucial role in enhancing traffic efficiency and safety by predicting and evaluating vehicle behavior in various traffic scenarios. Recently, vehicle simulation algorithms based on reinforcement learning have demonstrated excellent performance in practical tasks due to their ability to exhibit superior performance with zero-shot learning. However, these algorithms face challenges in field adaptation problems when deployed in task sets with variable-dimensional observations, primarily due to the inherent limitations of neural network models. In this paper, we propose a neural network structure accommodating variations in specific dimensions to enhance existing reinforcement learning methods. Building upon this, a scene-compatible vehicle simulation algorithm is designed. We conducted experiments on multiple tasks and scenarios using the Highway-Env traffic environment simulator. The results of our experiments demonstrate that the algorithm can successfully operate on all tasks using a neural network model with fixed shape, even with variable-dimensional observations. Our model exhibits no degradation in simulation performance when compared to the baseline algorithm.