Quantum supercomputer tasked with making trains run on time
A QUANTUM supercomputer will be used to find ways to make Britain’s trains run on time under tests from the Department of Transport aimed at overhauling rail schedules.
The Australian company Q-CTRL and Britain’s Oxford Quantum Circuits are developing a quantum algorithm designed to more efficiently organise train routes.
The billions of potential ways to arrange train schedules in a large network mean simulating them on conventional supercomputers rapidly becomes impossible. Quantum computers, meanwhile, promise a major boost in performance that could allow them to simulate different timetable scenarios.
Q-CTRL was last week awarded part of a £15m Government computing fund to develop “quantum-optimised train schedules”.
Quantum computers take advantage of the peculiar characteristics of quantum physics to process a vast number of possibilities at once.
This means it has the potential to easily outpace modern “classical” computers at tasks such as codebreaking or the development of new chemistry.
Michael Biercuk, Q-CTRL’S chief executive, said the computers could also be used to simulate many different alterations to train timetables at once to find the most efficient scenario.
He said optimising logistics was a “sleeper application but one of the high- est value and most impactful opportunities that we’ve identified”.
Mr Biercuk added: “These problems, mathematically, are very hard and they get very, very hard quite quickly.
“You think about a city-wide transit network, you’re talking about millions of passengers and thousands of vehicles … The big problems are insurmountable by conventional approaches.”
The company has already carried out tests for transport authorities in New South Wales and in logistics planning for the Australian army.
Quantum computers are largely seen as experimental today but Mr Biercuk said that tests showed that they had already surpassed traditional computers in some cases. He said the scheduling software should ultimately be able to ensure fewer delays and less waiting time for passengers.
It will also make train schedules less susceptible to disruption in cases such as signal failure, although the work was still at an early stage.
A separate company, Monirail, is planning to use quantum navigation sensors on the London Underground to identify flaws in the tracks.
The company’s existing devices already monitor how tracks degrade over time and can alert maintenance workers when parts need replacing.
They struggle, however, in Tube tunnels where GPS sensors do not work. Now Monirail is using sensors produced at Imperial College London, whose technology is being tested on ships as a backup to satellite navigation.
The project also has input from the University of Sussex.
The technology is due to be tested on the Hammersmith & City, District and Circle Tube lines in central London later this month.
Last year, Google said its quantum computer could instantly perform calculations that would take the best supercomputers 47 years, in what was seen as a breakthrough that confirms that the machines could beat existing computers.