Quantum Approach to Optimize Aircraft Cargo Loading

Proper planning is required for arranging cargos of different types, sizes and weights across the aircraft, so that the aircraft can fly safely with lesser fuel consumption and its payload capabilities can be utilized to the fullest, to maximize the revenue. Furthermore, along with the optimal loading, considering minimization of the loading/unloading operations at multiple stopovers adds complexity to the planning. In this paper, we present the quantum approach to address these two real-world challenges faced by the aviation industry, that is, maximizing the payload capacity of the aircraft and minimizing the loading/unloading operations across multiple stopovers. We experimented with both quantum annealing based and gate-based algorithms. As per our findings with respect to the performance and capabilities of the quantum platforms, we found D-Wave to be the most promising one as it supports enough qubits to address a realistic problem as compared to gate-based and quantum inspired optimizers. So further experimentation was carried out using D-Wave on Boeing 747-SF aircraft, one of the largest cargo carriers. Since in this work, our study is restricted to Boeing 747-8F aircraft, we can address different models of cargo aircrafts, transportation of cargo in the lower deck of passenger aircraft as a future scope of work, and work with different modes of transit system such as ships, trucks, rails.