For the last two decades, intelligent transportation systems (ITS) have emerged as an efficient way of improving the performance of transportation systems, enhancing travel security, and providing more choices to travelers. A significant change in ITS in recent years is that much more data are collected from a variety of sources and can be processed into various forms for different stakeholders. The availability of a large amount of data can potentially lead to a revolution in ITS development, changing an ITS from a conventional technology-driven system into a more powerful multifunctional data-driven intelligent transportation system (D2ITS) : a system that is vision, multisource, and learning algorithm driven to optimize its performance. Furthermore, D2ITS is trending to become a privacy-aware people-centric more intelligent system. In this paper, we provide a survey on the development of D2ITS, discussing the functionality of its key components and some deployment issues associated with D2ITS Future research directions for the development of D2ITS is also presented.

Data-Driven Intelligent Transportation Systems: A Survey

Microwave photonics with superconducting quantum circuits

During the last ten years, superconducting circuits have passed from being interesting physical devices to becoming contenders for near-future useful and scalable quantum information processing (QIP). Advanced quantum simulation experiments have been shown with up to nine qubits, while a demonstration of quantum supremacy with fifty qubits is anticipated in just a few years. Quantum supremacy means that the quantum system can no longer be simulated by the most powerful classical supercomputers. Integrated classical-quantum computing systems are already emerging that can be used for software development and experimentation, even via web interfaces. Therefore, the time is ripe for describing some of the recent development of superconducting devices, systems and applications. As such, the discussion of superconducting qubits and circuits is limited to devices that are proven useful for current or near future applications. Consequently, the centre of interest is the practical applications of QIP, such as computation and simulation in Physics and Chemistry.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6633/aa7e1a/pdf

Quantum information processing with superconducting circuits: a review

Quantum annealing is expected to solve certain optimization problems more efficiently, but there are still open questions regarding the functioning of devices such as D-Wave One. A numerical and experimental investigation of its performance shows evidence for quantum annealing with 108 qubits.

/pdf/evidence-for-quantum-annealing-with-more-than-one-hundred-1i2tupxr4o.pdf

Evidence for quantum annealing with more than one hundred qubits

The field of quantum algorithms aims to find ways to speed up the solution of computational problems by using a quantum computer. A key milestone in this field will be when a universal quantum computer performs a computational task that is beyond the capability of any classical computer, an event known as quantum supremacy. This would be easier to achieve experimentally than full-scale quantum computing, but involves new theoretical challenges. Here we present the leading proposals to achieve quantum supremacy, and discuss how we can reliably compare the power of a classical computer to the power of a quantum computer. Proposals for demonstrating quantum supremacy, when a quantum computer supersedes any possible classical computer at a specific task, are reviewed.

/pdf/quantum-computational-supremacy-44xs7qgoko.pdf

Quantum computational supremacy

We present a heuristic algorithm for finding a graph $H$ as a minor of a graph $G$ that is practical for sparse $G$ and $H$ with hundreds of vertices We also explain the practical importance of finding graph minors in mapping quadratic pseudo-boolean optimization problems onto an adiabatic quantum annealer

A practical heuristic for finding graph minors

Efforts to develop useful quantum computers have been blocked primarily by environmental noise. Quantum annealing is a scheme of quantum computation that is predicted to be more robust against noise, because despite the thermal environment mixing the system's state in the energy basis, the system partially retains coherence in the computational basis, and hence is able to establish well-defined eigenstates. Here we examine the environment's effect on quantum annealing using 16 qubits of a superconducting quantum processor. For a problem instance with an isolated small-gap anticrossing between the lowest two energy levels, we experimentally demonstrate that, even with annealing times eight orders of magnitude longer than the predicted single-qubit decoherence time, the probabilities of performing a successful computation are similar to those expected for a fully coherent system. Moreover, for the problem studied, we show that quantum annealing can take advantage of a thermal environment to achieve a speedup factor of up to 1,000 over a closed system.

/pdf/thermally-assisted-quantum-annealing-of-a-16-qubit-problem-375p0papqn.pdf

Thermally assisted quantum annealing of a 16-qubit problem

Video-based automatic incident detection (AID) systems are increasingly being used in intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Video-based AID is a promising method of incident detection. However, the accuracy of video-based AID is heavily affected by environmental factors such as shadows, snow, rain, and glare. This paper presents a review of the different work done in the literature to detect outdoor environmental factors, namely, static shadows, snow, rain, and glare. Once these environmental conditions are detected, they can be compensated for, and hence, the accuracy of alarms detected by video-based AID systems will be enhanced. Based on the presented review, this paper will highlight potential research directions to address gaps that currently exist in detecting outdoor environmental conditions. This will lead to an overall enhancement in the reliability of video-based AID systems and, hence, pave the road for more usage of these systems in the future. Last, this paper suggests new contributions in the form of new suggested algorithmic ideas to detect environmental factors that affect AID systems accuracy.

Video-Based Automatic Incident Detection for Smart Roads: The Outdoor Environmental Challenges Regarding False Alarms

A method for determining the presence and location of static shadows and other ambient conditions (such as glare, snow, rain, etc.) in a series of time-successive images is provided. Each image comprises a series of image elements locatable on a plane, with each element being associated with a color defined by three chromatic elements. Furthermore, each image is partitioned into a set of elements, with each element comprising one or more pixels. According to the process of the present method, the ambient conditions are detected using a mixture of processes which utilize the chromatic elements, luminance qualities and temporal characteristics of the series of images.

Detection of environmental conditions in a sequence of images

Block-matching motion estimation plays an important role in video coding. The simple and efficient fast block-matching algorithm using Variable Shape Search (VSS) proposed in this paper is based on diamond search and hexagon search. The initial big diamond search is designed to fit the directional centre-biased characteristics of the real-world video sequence, and the directional hexagon search is designed to identify a small region where the best motion vector is expected to locate. Finally, the small diamond search is used to select the best motion vector in the located small region. Experimental results showed that the proposed VSS algorithm can significantly reduce the computational complexity, and provide competitive computational speedup with similar distortion performance as compared with the popular Diamond-based Search (DS) algorithm in the MPEG-4 Simple Profile.

Jun Cai

Papers

A practical heuristic for finding graph minors

Thermally assisted quantum annealing of a 16-qubit problem

Video-Based Automatic Incident Detection for Smart Roads: The Outdoor Environmental Challenges Regarding False Alarms

Detection of environmental conditions in a sequence of images

A fast block-matching algorithm based on variable shape search