Connected vehicles ecological driving based on deep reinforce learning: Application of Web 3.0 technologies in traffic optimization

With the fast development of Web3.0 technology, connected vehicles can now handle and communicate data more safely and effectively. When combined with 5G/6G communication technology, these vehicles can optimize emissions in transportation networks to a greater extent. This study proposed an ecologically car-following model from natural driving data by using deep reinforcement learning under the context of the rapid development of Web 3.0 technologies. Firstly, by utilizing naturalistic driving data, an environment for connected vehicle car-following is created. Secondly, this paper uses SAC (Soft Actor-Critic) deep reinforcement learning algorithm and designs novel reward function based on ecological driving principles and car-following characteristics to reduce fuel consumption and emissions while maintaining safe distance with leading vehicle. Subsequently, the established model is tested, and results indicate that model not only performs well in terms of collision occurrences, Time-to-Collision (TTC), and driving comfort on test set but also achieves reduction of 5.50% in fuel consumption and reductions of 15.04%, 5.63%, and 9.60% in pollutant emissions (NOx, CO, and HC) compared to naturalistic manually driven vehicles.