A Robust Fuel Optimization Strategy For Hybrid Electric Vehicles: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Based Continuous Time Design Approach
Authors: Nilanjan Mukherjee, Sudeshna Sarkar
Keywords: Deep Reinforcement Learning, Optimal Control, Fuel Management System, Hybrid Electric vehicles, H∞ Performance Index
Abstract: This paper deals with the fuel optimization problem for hybrid electric vehicles in reinforcement learning framework. Firstly, considering the hybrid electric vehicle as a completely observable non-linear system with uncertain dynamics, we solve an open-loop  deterministic optimization problem. This is followed by the design of a  deep reinforcement learning based optimal controller for the non-linear system using concurrent learning based system identifier such that the actual states and the control policy are able to track the optimal trajectory and optimal policy, autonomously even in the presence of external disturbances, modeling errors, uncertainties and noise and signigicantly reducing the computational complexity at the same time, which is in sharp contrast to the conventional methods like PID and Model Predictive Control (MPC) as well as traditional RL approaches like ADP, DDP and DQN that mostly depend on a set of pre-defined rules and provide sub-optimal solutions under similar conditions. The low value of the H-infinity ($H_{\infty})$ performance index of the proposed optimization algorithm addresses the robustness issue. The optimization technique thus proposed is compared with the traditional fuel optimization strategies for hybrid electric vehicles to illustate the efficacy of the proposed method.