English

EcoFollower: An Environment-Friendly Car Following Model Considering Fuel Consumption

Robotics 2024-08-09 v1 Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

To alleviate energy shortages and environmental impacts caused by transportation, this study introduces EcoFollower, a novel eco-car-following model developed using reinforcement learning (RL) to optimize fuel consumption in car-following scenarios. Employing the NGSIM datasets, the performance of EcoFollower was assessed in comparison with the well-established Intelligent Driver Model (IDM). The findings demonstrate that EcoFollower excels in simulating realistic driving behaviors, maintaining smooth vehicle operations, and closely matching the ground truth metrics of time-to-collision (TTC), headway, and comfort. Notably, the model achieved a significant reduction in fuel consumption, lowering it by 10.42\% compared to actual driving scenarios. These results underscore the capability of RL-based models like EcoFollower to enhance autonomous vehicle algorithms, promoting safer and more energy-efficient driving strategies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2408.03950,
  title  = {EcoFollower: An Environment-Friendly Car Following Model Considering Fuel Consumption},
  author = {Hui Zhong and Xianda Chen and PakHin Tiu and Hongliang Lu and Meixin Zhu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.03950},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:06:49.702Z