Knowledge Distillation for Travel Time Estimation

Travel time estimation(TTE) is a critical component of intelligent transportation systems. To achieve efficient and accurate trajectory-based travel time estimation, it is essential to design a streamlined model that reduces computation and memory costs. However, this is challenging as traditional deep neural networks are limited in their calculation capabilities and can be cumbersome due to the high number of model parameters. To overcome these challenges, we propose a novel approach to travel time estimation, utilizing a well-designed deep neural network model called Knowledge Distillation for Travel Time Estimation (KDTTE). By implementing knowledge distillation techniques, the model’s computational and memory requirements are reduced, while simultaneously improving its accuracy. The student model leverages the knowledge of the Teacher model to learn features it would not have been able to on its own, thereby enhancing the overall accuracy of the model. Our approach, referred to as KDTTE, was tested on two real-world datasets and showed improved accuracy compared to nine state-of-the-art baselines, demonstrating a 34.0% and 86.8% increase in accuracy on the Chengdu and Porto datasets, respectively.