The New South Wales (NSW) Government has partnered with Australian quantum computing company Q-CTRL to explore how quantum computers can improve Sydney’s transportation network.
As Minister for Transport and Roads Andrew Constance explained, “This is a rare opportunity for some of our leading transport innovators and quantum computing experts to come together to tackle complex transport network management and congestion problems.”
The partnership represents the first major public sector transport agency to embrace quantum computing. The partnership first launched in late 2020, and Q-CTRL has now completed the validation of the concept and is in the custom development stage. The financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.
“Future applications of the technology could include mapping all transport modes and crowd movements simultaneously in real time, and automatically updating the schedule to solve disruption issues,” Constance elaborated. “We could see all trains, busses, ferries, trams and motorways essentially talking to each other to find out where customers are and deploy resources where needed. It could be used for massive public events, like New Year’s Eve or Vivid Festival.”
Q-CTRL’s quantum control protocols improve qubit error rates, extend the window of useful calibration on IBM Q hardware to five days, and increase algorithmic success while simplifying compilation, according to the company. Q-CTRL provides cloud-based software that can integrate with other cloud services, tools and quantum-computer hardware.
“Q-CTRL is focused on improving the efficiency of how that valuable hardware is used—we are both improving the so-called ‘compilation’ of relevant algorithms for transport and improving the performance of the underlying hardware via error reduction. All of this capability is being delivered in a custom software package that provides the real usable capability to Transport for NSW without mandating that users have degrees in quantum physics,” added Michael Biercuk, CEO of Q-CTRL.
It’s too early to say how this partnership will directly affect citizens. One challenge to overcome is the difficulty of reconfiguring the transport network.
“A critical bottleneck in current transport network optimization is the fact that computations take so long.… If successful at scale, this technology may permit full dynamic optimization of the transport network, allowing it to be more responsive to major changes in demand. It unlocks Mobility as a Service as a viable offering for city-scale networks as well,” said Biercuk.
“Right now because of the complexity of transport network optimization, overall schedules are calculated far in advance using standard computational tools. Finding real optimal solutions for more than a few dozen transport modes and stops can become prohibitive mandating imperfect and slow approximations.... The network-wide computations can be re-run dynamically—that is, as conditions change. This is a totally new capability that has simply never been within reach,” Biercuk continued.