Abstract
Recent advance on quantum devices realizes an artificial quantum spin system known as the D-Wave 2000Q, which implements the Ising model with tunable transverse field. In this system, we perform a specific protocol of quantum annealing to attain the ground state, the minimizer of the energy. Therefore the device is often called the quantum annealer. However the resulting spin configurations are not always in the ground state. It can rather quickly generate many spin configurations following the Gibbs-Boltzmann distribution. In the present study, we formulate an Ising model to control a large number of automated guided vehicles in a factory without collision. We deal with an actual factory in Japan, in which vehicles run, and assess efficiency of our formulation. Compared to the conventional powerful techniques performed in digital computer, still the quantum annealer does not show outstanding advantage in the practical problem. Our study demonstrates a possibility of the quantum annealer to contribute solving industrial problems.
Highlights
Quantum annealing is a technology recently attracting attentions from both of academic and business sides
Our QUBO problem is simple but valuable for the quantum annealer to control the automated guided vehicles (AGVs) in the factory, which is one of the important problems in industry. This is the first evidence showing possibility for the quantum annealer to contribute on the practical application it has many bottlenecks to be solved
We formulate the QUBO problem for controlling the AGVs in the actual factory in Japan. This is the first step of the practical application of the quantum annealer to the actual situation in industry
Summary
Quantum annealing is a technology recently attracting attentions from both of academic and business sides It solves the unconstrained binary quadratic programming problem (recently termed as the quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem) written as the following cost function E(q) = qTQq, (1). The optimization problem, which includes the unconstrained binary quadratic programming problem, is solved following adequate algorithm on the digital computer. In this sense, QA is not necessarily an alternative way to solve the optimization problem but it rather provides Because QA is one of the natural computing, utilizing quantum tunneling effect, which escapes from local minima into a global minimum
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