Seminar: Dr. Takashi Tanaka, "Road Traffic Games over Stochastic, Nonlinear and Dynamic Transportation Networks"
All dates for this event occur in the past.
Join The Ohio State University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) for a special seminar by Dr. Takashi Tanaka from the University of Texas at Austin.
Details:
Thursday, April 11th, 4-5 p.m.
Dreese Lab 260 (Coffee and cookies provided)
Title:
Road Traffic Games Over Stochastic, Nonlinear and Dynamic Transportation Networks
Abstract:
We consider a dynamic game in which multiple ride-hailing companies, each comprised of a large number of drivers, are competing over a shared traffic infrastructure to minimize individual teams' total travel time. In realistic scenarios where the underlying traffic systems are described by nonlinear, stochastic, and high-dimensional dynamical systems, analyzing such a game is a challenging task. In this talk, we discuss two novel mathematical frameworks that offer powerful tools for such an analysis. As the first framework, we introduce the class of linearly-solvable mean-field games (MFGs). This is a special class of the MFGs where an equilibrium can be found simply by solving a linear system. This is in contrast to the conventional MFG framework where coupled Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman and Fokker-Planck-Kolmogorov equations must be analyzed. Traffic congestion mitigation mechanism based on linearly-solvable MFG is discussed. In the second framework, we discuss Kappen's path-integral control and its generalization to dynamic games. We demonstrate that a Nash equilibrium among multiple ride-hailing companies in a stochastic game with nonlinear dynamics can found numerically by forward-in-time Monte-Carlo sampling.
Bio:
Takashi Tanaka is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his B.S. degree from the University of Tokyo in 2006, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from UIUC in 2009 and 2012, all in Aerospace Engineering. Prior to joining UT Austin, he held postdoctoral researcher positions at MIT and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. His research interests include control, optimization, game theory, information theory, and their applications to distributed decision-making problems.