Quantum Hackathon in the UK Tackles Satellite Scheduling to Folk Songs

At a glance

Ten teams gathered at a UK quantum hackathon to work on real problems for two days. Many of the challenges were posed by companies, such as planning satellite imaging schedules.

Key points

1. 1

   The event was a three-day program hosted by the UK National Quantum Computing Centre, where students and early-career researchers took part together with industry mentors.

2. 2

   One team worked on the problem of setting the order of satellite images. It used a quantum algorithm to create a starting point for existing calculations.

3. 3

   When tested on IBM's quantum devices, the results were similar to exact calculation methods, but at the scale of eight satellites, it did not outperform existing approaches.

Why it matters

It shows the current level of how far quantum computers can be used for real-world problems.