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Journal of Autonomous Vehicles and Systems

A Path to Solving Robotic Differential Equations Using Quantum Computing

Vinod P. Gehlot, Mark J. Balas, Marco B. Quadrelli, Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay, David S. Bayard, Amir Rahmani

Published Jul 1, 2022• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract Quantum computing and quantum information science is a burgeoning engineering field at the cusp of solving challenging robotic applications. This paper introduces a hybrid (gate-based) quantum computing and classical computing architecture to solve the motion propagation problem for a robotic system. This paper presents the quantum-classical architecture for linear differential equations defined by two types of linear operators: unitary and non-unitary system matrices, thereby solving any linear ordinary differential equations. The ability to encode information using bits or qubits—is essential in any computation problem. The results in this paper also introduce two novel approaches to encoding any arbitrary state vector or any arbitrary linear operator using qubits. Unlike other algorithms that solve ordinary differential equations (ODEs) using purely quantum or classical architectures, the ODE solver presented in this paper leverages the best of quantum and classical computing paradigms.

DOI
10.1115/1.4062615

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Abstract Quantum computing and quantum information science is a burgeoning engineering field at the cusp of solving challenging robotic applications. This paper introduces a hybrid (gate-based) quantum computing and classical computing architecture to solve the motion propagation problem for a robotic system. This paper presents the quantum-classical architecture for linear differential equations defined by two types of linear operators: unitary and non-unitary system matrices, thereby solving any linear ordinary differential equations. The ability to encode information using bits or qubits—is essential in any computation problem. The results in this paper also introduce two novel approaches to encoding any arbitrary state vector or any arbitrary linear operator using qubits. Unlike other algorithms that solve ordinary differential equations (ODEs) using purely quantum or classical architectures, the ODE solver presented in this paper leverages the best of quantum and classical computing paradigms.
Solving Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE) is important for a broad range of domains, such as engineering, weather forecast, and finance. Most quantum algorithms proposed to solve them revolve around transforming ODEs into a system of linear equations, in order to benefit from the exponential advantage promised by the HHL algorithm. However, there are known limitations to this subroutine such as the linear scaling with condition number. In particular, for HHL-based ODE solvers, this dependency yields a complexity that generally grows exponentially with the integration time. In this paper, we present a scheme that does not rely on the HHL subroutine. We use the Koopman Von Neumann (KvN) formalism that maps arbitrary nonlinear dynamics to a Hilbert space where the dynamics are unitary. This effectively reduces the ODE problem to a Hamiltonian time evolution, which is a well-known problem in quantum computing. However, this comes at a cost as the KvN formalism is expressed in an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, and involves nonphysical states with infinite energies. Previous works have tackled this by truncating the Hilbert space, and by approximating all the relevant states and operations on qubit-based systems. Instead of mapping to qubit-based computations, in this paper, we investigate the direct use of continuous-variable quantum computers for this problem. We provide an algorithm to compile a sequence of Gaussian and non-Gaussian continuous variables gates to solve an arbitrary one-dimensional polynomial ODE. We analyze the algorithm and propose that it is intrinsically better suited for solving so-called initial distribution problems, rather than initial condition problems. We propose the first steps towards a comprehensive complexity and specify which steps need to be developed for a complete analysis.
Differential equations (DEs) serve as fundamental tools in mathematical modeling across scientific disciplines, yet classical numerical solvers face limitations with large-scale or computationally intensive problems. This study explores a quantum-inspired approach to solving DEs, combining quantum-inspired techniques with classical methods. It focuses on fixed-point arithmetic on quantum circuits, utilizing basic quantum gates to manipulate DE solutions. We expand upon the techniques introduced by Zanger et al. [Quantum, 5, 502 (2021)] by offering a precise computation for a fixed-point signed multiplication scheme, while also presenting a quantum circuit capable of executing the fixed-point division algorithm. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach through the simulation of a linear Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE), where initial conditions and parameters are encoded into quantum circuits using fixed-point representation. By executing sequences of quantum gates mimicking numerical integration steps, we obtain approximate solutions to the ODE with specified fixed-point precision.
We explore how a continuous-variable (CV) quantum computer could solve a classic differential equation, making use of its innate capability to represent real numbers in qumodes. Specifically, we construct variational CV quantum circuits [Killoran et al., Phys.~Rev.~Research 1, 033063 (2019)] to approximate the solution of one-dimensional ordinary differential equations (ODEs), with input encoding based on displacement gates and output via measurement averages. Our simulations and parameter optimization using the PennyLane / Strawberry Fields framework demonstrate good convergence for both linear and non-linear ODEs.
Solving linear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) is one of the most promising applications for quantum computers to demonstrate exponential advantages. The challenge of designing a quantum ODE algorithm is how to embed nonunitary dynamics into intrinsically unitary quantum circuits. In this Letter, we propose a new quantum algorithm for solving ODEs by harnessing open quantum systems. Specifically, we propose a novel technique called nondiagonal density matrix encoding, which leverages the inherent nonunitary dynamics of Lindbladians to encode general linear ODEs into the nondiagonal blocks of density matrices. This framework enables us to design quantum algorithms with both theoretical simplicity and high performance. Combined with the state-of-the-art quantum Lindbladian simulation algorithms, our algorithm can outperform all existing quantum ODE algorithms and achieve near-optimal dependence on all parameters under a plausible input model. We also give applications of our algorithm including the Gibbs state preparations and the partition function estimations.
In this work, a novel quantum Fourier ordinary differential equation (ODE) solver is proposed to solve both linear and nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs). Traditional quantum ODE solvers transform a PDE into an ODE system via spatial discretization and then integrate it, thereby converting the task of solving the PDE into computing the integral for the driving function f(x). These solvers rely on the quantum amplitude estimation algorithm, which requires the driving function f(x) to be within the range of [0, 1] and necessitates the construction of a quantum circuit for the oracle R that encodes f(x). This construction can be highly complex, even for simple functions like f(x) = x. An important exception arises for the specific case of f(x) = sin2(mx + c), which can be encoded more efficiently using a set of Ry rotation gates. To address these challenges, we expand the driving function f(x) as a Fourier series and propose the quantum Fourier ODE Solver. This approach not only simplifies the construction of the oracle R but also removes the restriction that f(x) must lie within [0,1]. The proposed method was evaluated by solving several representative linear and nonlinear PDEs, including the Navier–Stokes (N–S) equations. The results show that the quantum Fourier ODE solver produces results that closely match both analytical and reference solutions.
For quantum computers to become useful tools to physicists, engineers and computational scientists, quantum algorithms for solving nonlinear differential equations need to be developed. Despite recent advances, the quest for a solver that can integrate nonlinear dynamical systems with a quantum advantage, whilst being realisable on available (or near-term) quantum hardware, is an open challenge. In this paper, we propose to transform a nonlinear dynamical system into a linear system, which we integrate with quantum algorithms. Key to the method is the Fokker-Planck equation, which is a non-normal partial differential equation. Three integration strategies are proposed: (i) Forward-Euler stepping by unitary block encoding; (ii) Schroedingerisation, and (iii) Forward-Euler stepping by linear addition of unitaries. We emulate the integration of prototypical nonlinear systems with the proposed quantum solvers, and compare the output with the benchmark solutions of classical integrators. We find that classical and quantum outputs are in good agreement. This paper opens opportunities for solving nonlinear differential equations with quantum algorithms.