Volkswagen Successfully Demos First Live Use of Quantum Computing to Optimize Traffic

(GreenCarCongress) Volkswagen AG has successfully demonstrated the world’s first live use of quantum computing to help optimize traffic routing. During the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, Portugal, nine public transit buses used a traffic management system developed by Volkswagen scientists in the United States and Germany, powered by a D-Wave quantum computer, to calculate the fastest travel routes individually and in near-real time.
Volkswagen experts helped developed the Quantum Routing algorithm and data management system that runs on the D-Wave quantum computer in house, collaborating with specialists Hexad and PTV Group to round out the project.
The system combined classical (non-quantum) machine learning for predicting traffic flow and optimizing the distribution of vehicles so that its changes minimized the effect on traffic elsewhere. Depending on the number of locations, today’s supercomputers might require up to a thousand years to solve these types of problems.