traffic jam on the highway
Quantum-optimized navigation could prevent traffic jams in the future, Volkswagen believes.
Dusseldorf Volkswagen wants to redeem a decade-old promise. Car makers, manufacturers of navigation devices and IT companies had been there when the early 1990s, the first GPS devices came on the market. However, when later on new algorithms appeared and computers were built that could handle them, it was never fulfilled: the vision of a modern navigation that enables jam-free mobility.
To this day, city traffic at peak times often resembles a single chaos. The car maker VW now wants to have found a solution to the traffic collapse. With the help of quantum computers, the Wolfsburgers want to finally fulfill the promise.
As part of the Web Summit digital conference in Lisbon, Volkswagen will be putting Quantum Routing into operation for the first time on 4 November. Nine buses under the name “Quantum Travel” will take guests from the airport to the venue of the downtown conference. The drivers rely on quantum-optimized route information.
VW promises a nearly congestion-free mobility, no matter what time. For people will so that the quantum technology first experienced. “People who travel from the fair back to their hotels or into the city and use our Quantum shuttles to reach their destination faster,” says Martin Hofmann, IT chief at Volkswagen, the Handelsblatt. “We can significantly reduce travel time.”
VW has been researching for three years on a quantum-based model for traffic optimization. The car maker is one of a number of companieswho promise unprecedented computing power from the devices. The achievements of the researchers were so far only scientific kind, commercial applications there are none.
Infographic: Quantum computers are on the go all-rounder
According to its own statements, however, VW is moving towards a near-series application of quantum technology with its traffic optimization model. The company uses D-Wave quantum computers. The Canadian start-up provides the carmaker with computation time; VW develops the algorithms that the computer uses in Canada.
“Traffic in major cities is highly complex due to the large number of road users,” explains Hofmann. The computing power that would be needed to optimize the flow of traffic is exorbitant. “That’s why we’ve tried to solve this problem with D-Wave’s quantum computers,” says the VW manager.
Behind this task hides the “Traveling Salesman problem”. In this case, a commercial traveler must approach several locations from a starting point. The order does not matter. However, two conditions apply: the starting point of the journey is also its end point, and the entire journey must be completed as quickly as possible.
Depending on the number of locations, today’s supercomputers require up to a thousand years to solve this harmless distribution problem. A quantum computer could theoretically handle this within fractions of a second.
The computers of D-Wave, however, are not universal quantum computers. where Google or IBM research, The Canadian start-up is building so-called quantum annealers. They can only solve very specific distribution problems. The researchers at VW’s Data Labs in Munich and San Francisco believe that traffic optimization is one of them.
Avoid congestion before it arises
Frank Wilhelm-Mauch, Professor of Quantum and Solid State Theory at the University of Saarland and one of the leading experts in Germany, is a little more careful. “In some special fields of application, such as distribution problems, quantum computers could work better than supercomputers,” says Wilhelm-Mauch.
However, the assumption is based on heuristic statements, that is basically based on conjecture. “A mathematical proof of the Superiority of quantum computers There are not yet any solutions to certain distribution problems, “says Mauch.
For VW, this should initially be secondary in Lisbon. With the first live test, the car manufacturer wants to prove how mature Quantum Routing already is. In the run-up to the Web Summit, VW had already tested the system in Wolfsburg and Lisbon, as Florian Neukart reveals, who, as chief scientist in San Francisco, is researching the applications of quantum technology for the carmaker.
“The biggest difficulty is to solve the distribution problem quickly. A traffic optimization just needs a solution in the shortest possible time, “says Neukart the Handelsblatt. According to Neukart, the computing speed of the D-Wave quantum annealers in exactly this field of application massively shortens the time needed for a prediction calculation. “In this way, the drivers can be repeatedly supplied with new optimized routes at short intervals,” says Neukart.
Quantum researcher Wilhelm-Mauch sees the effort as a good start. “Companies like VW are taking a correct approach because they choose usecases that can be solved very well with the help of quantum computers,” he says.
]]>