Qubit efficient quantum algorithms for the vehicle routing problem on NISQ processors

Understand

The vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) is a common optimization problem faced within the logistics industry.

• In this work, we explore the use of a previously-introduced qubit encoding scheme to reduce the number of binary variables, to evaluate the effectiveness of NISQ devices when applied to industry relevant optimization problems.
• We apply a quantum variational approach to a testbed of multiple VRPTW instances ranging from 11 to 3964 routes.
• These intances were formulated as quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problems based on realistic shipping scenarios.