Abstract:To address the issues of unstable formation, control lag, and degraded safety when vehicle platoons drive in complex road scenarios such as varying-curvature ramps, this paper proposes a stage reward shaping twin delayed deep deterministic policy gradient (SR-TD3) algorithm. By combining connected vehicle information with a multi-agent reinforcement learning framework, this algorithm achieves stable cooperative control of platoons on varying-curvature roads. It accomplishes this by designing safety-, smoothness-, and efficiency-oriented reward functions specifically for the three curvature stages: entering, maintaining, and exiting the road. Structurally, the algorithm adopts acentralized training with decentralized execution architecture, integrates parameter sharing and prioritized experience replay mechanisms, and introduces a residual regularization term into the Critic network to suppress value fluctuations. Experimental results based on the CARLA simulation platform demonstrate that, compared with five existing algorithms, the SR-TD3 algorithm achieves significant improvements in convergence speed, stability, and car-following precision. Specifically, during the road curvature transition stage, the root mean square error of vehicle speed is reduced by 41.31%, 86.53%, 58.25%, 73.08% and 81.60%, respectively, compared to the five baseline algorithms. Throughout the entire varying-curvature ramp, inter-vehicle distance control is improved by 27.30%, 54.52%, 36.66%, 77.51% and 76.37%, respectively. Furthermore, the reward curve converges faster with smaller fluctuations, demonstrating superior control stability and learning efficiency.