Context-Based Deep Meta Reinforcement Learning for Active Pantograph Control in High-Speed Railway
Wang Hui1, Peng Yuxiang1, Chu Wenping1,2, Song Yang1,3, Liu Zhigang1
1. School of Electrical Engineering Southwest Jiaotong University Chengdu 611756 China; 2. China Railway Construction Electrification Bureau Group Co. Ltd Beijing 100043 China; 3. Leeds-SWJTU Joint School Southwest Jiaotong University Chengdu 611756 China
Abstract：Active pantograph control is the most promising technique for reducing contact force (CF) fluctuation and improving the train's current collection quality. The train's high-speed operation causes wave propagation and nonlinearity dynamics, making it challenging to maintain a suitable and stable contact force. Scholars have proposed numerous control strategies for the PCS in recent years, including proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control, sliding mode control, feedback control, optimal control, robust control, etc. Thesecontrol strategies often achieve good results on single simulation scenes. Existing solutions, however, suffer from three significant limitations: (1) they are incapable of dealing with the various pantograph types, catenary line operating conditions, changing operating speeds, and contingencies well. (2) It is challenging to implement in practical systems due to the lack of rapid adaptability to new PCS operating conditions and environmental disturbances; (3) It is particularly difficult to characterize the sensor accuracy, actuator uncertainty, railway line parameters, and external excitations because all of these factors can drift over time. The high-speed railway systems with widely varying operating conditions will increase uncertainty. In this paper, we improve the current collection quality by developing and applying a context-based deep meta-reinforcement learning (CB-DMRL) approach to learn and finetune the control strategy. It combines improved distributed soft actor-critic algorithm with environment-sensitive task encoder to train a meta-policy, which can quickly adapt to different PCS operating conditions and environmental disturbances. Firstly, an improved distributed soft actor-critic algorithm, including distributed state-action value function and dual-value distribution learning, is proposed to solve the overestimation problem in value estimation and stabilize the training process. Secondly, the proposed method allows the environment-sensitive task encoder and well-trained agent to adapt to new tasks quickly and efficiently, even in unseen tasks and non-stationary environments. Finally, a validated non-linear pantograph-catenary system model is established based on the finite element and multi-body dynamics theory as the simulation environment in DRL. The state space, action space, and reward in are redesigned to train the meta-agent. We evaluated the CB-DMRL algorithm's performance on a proven PCS model and active pantograph HIL experiment platform. The experimental results demonstrate that meta-training DRL policies with latent space swiftly adapt to new operating conditions and unknown perturbations. The meta-agent adapts quickly after two iterations with a high reward, which require only 10 steps. The standard deviation of contact force is reduced by 14.71%, 16.93%, 21.22%, and 35.69% at 320 km/h, 340 km/h, 360 km/h, and 380 km/h respectively. The faster the train runs, the better the control effect is. Because the high-speed train has caused strong pantograph-catenary system vibration, our method can effectively improve the current collection quality. Even in unknown scenarios, the proposed approach can adapt the well-trained behavior policy to the new task using environment-sensitive task encoder. Given the rapidly changing PCS operating conditions and unknown environmental disturbances, we believe this research is a significant advance in applying DRL to PCS control. The following conclusions can be drawn from the simulation analysis: (1) In the algorithm components of this paper, the improved distributed SAC algorithm can effectively improve the value estimation accuracy and stabilize the training process to solve the problem of exploding and vanishing gradients. The task encoder sensitive to environmental changes can quickly generate the optimal task encoding based on the context of the interaction sample. (2) Compared with the most advanced pantograph active control method, the method proposed in this paper achieves the lowest contact force variance and can quickly adapt to new control tasks and environmental disturbances. The deep meta-reinforcement learning algorithm used in this paper has achieved good results in multi-scenario pantograph active control. However, how to scientifically and effectively update the meta-strategy parameters in limited computing power scenarios such as running vehicles needs to be explored in the future.
王惠, 彭宇祥, 储文平, 宋洋, 刘志刚. 基于上下文深度元强化学习的高速铁路受电弓主动控制[J]. 电工技术学报, 2026, 41(5): 1680-1695.
Wang Hui, Peng Yuxiang, Chu Wenping, Song Yang, Liu Zhigang. Context-Based Deep Meta Reinforcement Learning for Active Pantograph Control in High-Speed Railway. Transactions of China Electrotechnical Society, 2026, 41(5): 1680-1695.
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2026, Vol. 41 
