Traffic Technology TodayTraffic Technology Today
  • News
    • A-D
      • Appointments & Staffing
      • Asset Management
      • Autonomous Vehicles & ADAS
      • Awards
      • Cloud Computing
      • Congestion Reduction
      • Connected Vehicles
      • Covid-19
      • Cybersecurity
      • Data & Modeling
      • Deals, Acquisitions & Mergers
    • E-J
      • Electric vehicles & infrastructure
      • Emissions & Low Emission Zones
      • Enforcement
      • Event News
      • Funding
      • Incident Detection
      • Infrastructure
      • Intersections & Traffic Signals
      • ITS
    • K-S
      • Legal / Government Regulation
      • Machine Vision / ALPR
      • Mapping
      • Mobility as a Service
      • Multimodality & Micromobility
      • Planning, Testing, R&D
      • Public transit
      • Safety
      • Smart Cities
      • Smart Parking
    • T-Z
      • Tolling
      • Traffic counting & categorization
      • Traffic Management
      • Traveler Information Systems
      • Tunnels & Bridges
      • Variable Message Signs
      • Vulnerable Road Users
      • Weather systems
  • Features
    • Features
    • Opinion
  • Online Magazines
    • September 2023
    • May 2023
    • March 2023
    • Nov/Dec 2022
    • September 2022
    • Archive Issues
    • Subscribe Free!
    • > Tolltrans
  • Videos
  • Audio
    • The Transportation Podcast
    • Additional Audio
  • Events
  • Webinars
  • Technology Profiles
LinkedIn YouTube X (Twitter)
LinkedIn YouTube X (Twitter)
Subscribe >
Traffic Technology TodayTraffic Technology Today
  • News
      • Appointments & Staffing
      • Asset Management
      • Autonomous Vehicles & ADAS
      • Awards
      • Cloud Computing
      • Congestion Reduction
      • Connected Vehicles
      • Covid-19
      • Cybersecurity
      • Data & Modeling
      • Deals, Acquisitions & Mergers
      • Electric vehicles & infrastructure
      • Emissions & Low Emission Zones
      • Enforcement
      • Event News
      • Funding
      • Incident Detection
      • Infrastructure
      • Intersections & Traffic Signals
      • ITS
      • Legal / Government Regulation
      • Machine Vision / ALPR
      • Mapping
      • Mobility as a Service
      • Multimodality & Micromobility
      • Planning, Testing, R&D
      • Public transit
      • Safety
      • Smart Cities
      • Smart Parking
      • Tolling
      • Traffic counting & categorization
      • Traffic Management
      • Traveler Information Systems
      • Tunnels & Bridges
      • Variable Message Signs
      • Vulnerable Road Users
      • Weather systems
  • Features
    • Features
    • Opinion
  • Online Magazines
    1. September 2023
    2. May 2023
    3. March 2023
    4. Nov/Dec 2022
    5. September 2022
    6. Archive Issues
    7. Subscribe Free!
    8. > Tolltrans
    Featured
    September 15, 2023

    In this Issue – September 2023

    Online Magazines By Tom Stone
    Recent

    In this Issue – September 2023

    September 15, 2023

    In this Issue – May 2023

    May 4, 2023

    In this Issue – March 2023

    March 20, 2023
  • Videos
  • Audio
    • The Transportation Podcast
    • Additional Audio
  • Events
  • Webinars
  • Technology Profiles
LinkedIn YouTube X (Twitter)
Traffic Technology TodayTraffic Technology Today
Data & Modeling

Aimsun and UC Berkeley launch cloud-based traffic simulation tool

Rachelle HarryBy Rachelle HarryJanuary 14, 20193 Mins Read
Share LinkedIn Twitter Facebook Email

A new partnership between transport software developer Aimsun and the University of California at Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies has resulted in the release of Flow, a tool for managing large-scale traffic systems with a mix of human-driven and autonomous vehicles (AVs).

Flow is the first open source architecture to integrate microsimulation tools with state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning libraries in the cloud – in this case using the Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud (AWS EC2). In an environment with a mix of human-driven and automated vehicles, it is a major challenge to learn how to make good decisions regarding, for example, AV control or traffic signal control, especially when trying to predict complex human behaviors and the potential impact of self-driving vehicles on traffic. However, recent developments in multi-agent deep reinforcement learning algorithms, advances in Aimsun Next microscopic traffic simulation libraries, and improved ease of cloud computing such as AWS, together provide a powerful ecosystem for finding near-optimal decision-making rules such as AV acceleration, AV lane changing, or traffic signal splits in mixed autonomy systems.

Originally launched in September 2018, with benchmarks released in November at the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), Flow now also integrates Aimsun’s Next traffic modeling software. With this new release of Flow, Next users can now benefit from a new environment, with access to state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning libraries in the cloud without the requirement of building their own machine learning infrastructure. A Siemens company since last year, Aimsun will be presenting Flow at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington DC this week, alongside representatives from the UC Berkeley team.

Flow is a traffic control framework that provides a suite of prebuilt traffic control scenarios, tools for designing custom traffic scenarios, and integration with deep reinforcement learning libraries such as RLlib and traffic microsimulation libraries. Engineers can use Flow to apply deep reinforcement learning breakthroughs to various cases in traffic management, which involve classic traffic infrastructure such as traffic lights, metering, etc, and mobile infrastructure such as mixed autonomy traffic, in particular using connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) to regulate traffic.

Flow is a tool for exploring numerous case studies using a building-block type of approach, such as the use of modular benchmark cases that can be assembled. Users can build modular traffic-scenarios, which can be combined to tackle complex situations. These building-blocks help break a problem down into smaller, tractable pieces that can be composed as controllers for new scenarios. For instance, single-lane/multilane and merge building blocks can be used to study stop-and-go and merging traffic behaviors along a highway.

In mixed-autonomy traffic control, evaluating proposed RL methods in the literature is often difficult, largely due to the lack of a standardized testbed. Systematic evaluation and comparison will not only further our understanding of the strengths of existing algorithms, but also reveal their limitations and suggest directions for future research. Flow provides benchmarks in the use of deep reinforcement learning to create controllers for mixed-autonomy traffic, where CAVs interact with human drivers and infrastructure.

Share. Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Email
Previous ArticleOregon DOT using high-accuracy GNSS rugged tablets for statewide projects
Next Article Highways England continues its award-winning road noise initiative
Rachelle Harry

Rachelle joined Traffic Technology International in early 2016 after having worked for an HR magazine and prior to that, as a freelance sub editor for various lifestyle consumer magazines. As deputy editor, she supports the editor in making each issue and updating the website. Outside of work, she enjoys tap dancing, playing the piano and video games, and eating spicy food.

Related Posts

Data & Modeling

Q-Free achieves SOC 2 Type 2 compliance for data security

November 23, 20232 Mins Read
Data & Modeling

Flow Labs and TomTom announce major US-based traffic data partnership

October 5, 20233 Mins Read
Data & Modeling

NEW WEBINAR: Cutting-edge safety solutions to reach Vision Zero

September 28, 20233 Mins Read
Latest Posts

VIDEO: Volcopter ‘air taxi’ completes first flight in NYC

December 7, 2023

ITS America announces new leadership team

December 7, 2023

Transport for London’s new COO is Claire Mann

December 7, 2023
FREE WEEKLY NEWS EMAIL!

Get the ‘best of the week’ from TrafficTechnologyToday.com direct to your inbox every Thursday


Supplier Spotlight
  • Conduent Transportation
    Conduent Transportation
Our Social Channels
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
Getting in Touch
  • Free Email Newsletters
  • Contact Us
  • Meet the Editors
  • Supplier Spotlight

Upcoming Events

Jan 7
7th January 2024 - 11th January 2024

TRB Annual Meeting

Jan 9
9th January 2024 - 12th January 2024

CES 2024

Apr 16
16th April 2024 - 19th April 2024

Intertraffic Amsterdam

View Calendar
© 2023 Mark Allen Group Ltd | All Rights Reserved
  • Cookie Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.