Reinforcement Learning (RL), trained via trial and error in simulators, has been proven to be an effective approach for addressing task assignment problems in spatial crowdsourcing. However, a performance gap still exists when transferring the simulator-trained RL Models (RLMs) to real-world settings due to the misalignment of travel time. Existing works mostly focus on using data-driven and learning-based methods to predict travel time; unfortunately, these approaches are limited in achieving accurate predictions by requiring a large amount of real-world data covering the entire state distribution. In this paper, we propose a Sim-to-Real Transfer with Human-guided Language Models framework called HLMTrans, which comprises three core modules: RLMs decision for task assignment, sim-to-real transfer with Large Language Models (LLMs), and preference learning from human feedback. HLMTrans first leverages the zero-shot chain-of-thought reasoning capability of LLMs to estimate travel time by capturing the real-world dynamics. This estimation is then input as domain knowledge into the forward model of Grounded Action Transformation (GAT) to enhance the action transformation of RLMs. Further, we design a human preference learning mechanism to fine-tune LLMs, improving their generation quality and enabling RLMs learn a more realistic policy. We evaluate the proposed HLMTrans on two real-world datasets, and the experimental results demonstrate that HLMTrans outperforms the SOTA methods in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has superior autonomous decision-making capabilities, combining deep learning and reinforcement learning (RL). Unlike DRL employs deep neural networks (DNNs), broad RL (BRL) adopts the broad learning system (BLS) that is established with flat networks to generate the strategy. This article proposes the multiagent adaptive broad-DRL (ABDRL) approach for traffic light control (TLC), which combines the broad network with the deep network structure. Specifically, the structure of ABDRL first expands in the form of flatted broad networks. Then, the feature representation module that contains DNNs is employed to extract the critical traffic information. In addition, experiences sampled randomly by the experience replay mechanism cannot reflect the current training status of the agent effectively. In order to alleviate the impacts caused by random sampling, the forgetful experience mechanism (FEM) is incorporated into ABDRL. The FEM enables the agent to discriminate the importance of experiences stored in the experience reply buffer to improve robustness and adaptability. We validate the effectiveness of ABDRL in TLC, and the results illustrate the optimality and robustness of ABDRL over the state-of-the-art multiagent DRL (MADRL) algorithms.

Efficient traffic light control is a critical part of realizing smart transportation. In particular, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithms that use deep neural networks (DNNs) have superior autonomous decision-making ability. Most existing work has applied DRL to control traffic lights intelligently. In this article, we propose a novel context-aware multiagent broad reinforcement learning (CAMABRL) approach based on broad reinforcement learning (BRL) for mixed pedestrian-vehicle adaptive traffic light control (ATLC). CAMABRL exploits the broad learning system (BLS) established in a flat network structure to make decisions instead of a deep network structure. Unlike previous works that consider the attributes of vehicles, CAMABRL also takes the states of pedestrians waiting at the intersection into consideration. Combining with the context-aware mechanism that utilizes the states of adjacent agents and potential state information captured by the long short-term memory (LSTM) network, agents can make farsighted decisions to alleviate traffic congestion. The experimental results show that CAMABRL is superior to several state-of-the-art multiagent reinforcement learning (MARL) methods.