Ultra-fast Traffic Nowcasting and Control via Differentiable Agent-based Simulation
- URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.25068v1
- Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2026 06:13:01 GMT
- Title: Ultra-fast Traffic Nowcasting and Control via Differentiable Agent-based Simulation
- Abstract summary: We present a differentiable agent-based traffic simulator that enables ultra-fast model calibration, traffic nowcasting, and control on large-scale networks.<n>On the large-scale Chicago road network, with over 10,000 calibration parameters, our model simulates more than one million vehicles at 173 times real-time speed.
- Score: 5.441710540892348
- License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Abstract: Traffic digital twins, which inform policymakers of effective interventions based on large-scale, high-fidelity computational models calibrated to real-world traffic, hold promise for addressing societal challenges in our rapidly urbanizing world. However, conventional fine-grained traffic simulations are non-differentiable and typically rely on inefficient gradient-free optimization, making calibration for real-world applications computationally infeasible. Here we present a differentiable agent-based traffic simulator that enables ultra-fast model calibration, traffic nowcasting, and control on large-scale networks. We develop several differentiable computing techniques for simulating individual vehicle movements, including stochastic decision-making and inter-agent interactions, while ensuring that entire simulation trajectories remain end-to-end differentiable for efficient gradient-based optimization. On the large-scale Chicago road network, with over 10,000 calibration parameters, our model simulates more than one million vehicles at 173 times real-time speed. This ultra-fast simulation, together with efficient gradient-based optimization, enables us to complete model calibration using the previous 30 minutes of traffic data in 455 s, provide a one-hour-ahead traffic nowcast in 21 s, and solve the resulting traffic control problem in 728 s. This yields a full calibration--nowcast--control loop in under 20 minutes, leaving about 40 minutes of lead time for implementing interventions. Our work thus provides a practical computational basis for realizing traffic digital twins.
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