Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach for Autonomous Fleet Management

A Master of Science thesis in Computer Engineering by Mohammed Omer Alamin Alhusin entitled, “Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach for Autonomous Fleet Management”, submitted in December 2019. Thesis advisor is Dr. Michel Pasquier and thesis co-advisor is Dr. Gerassimos Barlas. Soft copy is a...

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Main Author: Alhusin, Mohammed Omer Alamin (author)
Format: doctoralThesis
Published: 2019
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Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/11073/16577
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author Alhusin, Mohammed Omer Alamin
author_facet Alhusin, Mohammed Omer Alamin
author_role author
dc.contributor.none.fl_str_mv Pasquier, Michel
Barlas, Gerassimos
dc.creator.none.fl_str_mv Alhusin, Mohammed Omer Alamin
dc.date.none.fl_str_mv 2019-12
2020-01-26T08:05:35Z
2020-01-26T08:05:35Z
dc.format.none.fl_str_mv application/pdf
application/pdf
dc.identifier.none.fl_str_mv 35.232-2019.65
http://hdl.handle.net/11073/16577
dc.language.none.fl_str_mv en_US
dc.subject.none.fl_str_mv Markov Decision Process
Markov Game
Deep Learning
Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
Convolutional Neural Network
Fleet Management
Taxi Dispatch Problem
dc.title.none.fl_str_mv Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach for Autonomous Fleet Management
dc.type.none.fl_str_mv info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis
description A Master of Science thesis in Computer Engineering by Mohammed Omer Alamin Alhusin entitled, “Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach for Autonomous Fleet Management”, submitted in December 2019. Thesis advisor is Dr. Michel Pasquier and thesis co-advisor is Dr. Gerassimos Barlas. Soft copy is available (Thesis, Approval Signatures, Completion Certificate, and AUS Archives Consent Form).
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identifier_str_mv 35.232-2019.65
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network_acronym_str aus
network_name_str aus
oai_identifier_str oai:repository.aus.edu:11073/16577
publishDate 2019
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spelling Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach for Autonomous Fleet ManagementAlhusin, Mohammed Omer AlaminMarkov Decision ProcessMarkov GameDeep LearningMulti-Agent Reinforcement LearningConvolutional Neural NetworkFleet ManagementTaxi Dispatch ProblemA Master of Science thesis in Computer Engineering by Mohammed Omer Alamin Alhusin entitled, “Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach for Autonomous Fleet Management”, submitted in December 2019. Thesis advisor is Dr. Michel Pasquier and thesis co-advisor is Dr. Gerassimos Barlas. Soft copy is available (Thesis, Approval Signatures, Completion Certificate, and AUS Archives Consent Form).The Taxi Dispatch problem is a well-known and important problem in the field of transportation and logistics, that has many similarities with other fleet management problems. The objective of the taxi dispatch system is to assign idle taxis to passengers waiting at different geographical locations in a way that maximizes resource utilization while minimizing their operating cost. Traditionally, heuristic rules are used in dispatch problems, mainly because of the simplicity and scalability of the approach. However, at high demand rates, rule-based approaches perform poorly. This encouraged many researchers to build more complex models to tackle the dispatch problem, but most of these models are computationally expensive and cannot scale to handle large fleets. Additionally, most of these approaches are not robust enough for a stochastic environment, which is usually the case with real-world traffic. In this work we model the problem as a Markov Game and solve it using Model-Free Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning, which is the best approach when the environment is stochastic and there is otherwise no good model for it. The main drawback of reinforcement learning is that it requires too much time and data to learn the optimal policy. In this work we address this issue and strive to improve the efficiency of this algorithm. The curse of dimensionality was broken by representing the state variable as an image which made the complexity independent from the number of taxis and requests and only dependent on the size of the map thus allowing the algorithm to handle large fleets with ease. Using a residual convolutional neural network as Q function approximator allowed the agents to learn complex spatial patterns while seeing only few training samples. We have also found that we can reduce the resolution of the state variable by more than half while losing only 3% of the performance. The proposed algorithm was validated against a rule-based heuristic under different supply-demand ratios, and found to outperform the rule-based technique by a large margin when there is a lack of supply.College of EngineeringDepartment of Computer Science and EngineeringMaster of Science in Computer Engineering (MSCoE)Pasquier, MichelBarlas, Gerassimos2020-01-26T08:05:35Z2020-01-26T08:05:35Z2019-12info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesisapplication/pdfapplication/pdf35.232-2019.65http://hdl.handle.net/11073/16577en_USoai:repository.aus.edu:11073/165772025-12-08T05:58:02Z
spellingShingle Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach for Autonomous Fleet Management
Alhusin, Mohammed Omer Alamin
Markov Decision Process
Markov Game
Deep Learning
Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
Convolutional Neural Network
Fleet Management
Taxi Dispatch Problem
status_str publishedVersion
title Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach for Autonomous Fleet Management
title_full Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach for Autonomous Fleet Management
title_fullStr Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach for Autonomous Fleet Management
title_full_unstemmed Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach for Autonomous Fleet Management
title_short Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach for Autonomous Fleet Management
title_sort Multi Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach for Autonomous Fleet Management
topic Markov Decision Process
Markov Game
Deep Learning
Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
Convolutional Neural Network
Fleet Management
Taxi Dispatch Problem
url http://hdl.handle.net/11073/16577