Tech Briefs Magazine - December 2023 - 33

electricity. Aerovy Mobility is addressing
those power grid limitations with its
software solutions.
" The AATLAS planning software identifies
locations that would attract the most
demand so operators would be able to
make back their investments quickly, " Gunady
said. " It also assesses the expected
usage over
time,
simulating
charging
events minute by minute throughout the
day. We can size power generation and
storage assets, which enables end users to
reduce dependence on the grid. "
" Customers will have full control over
their infrastructure site without physically
needing to be there, " Gunady added. " We
have built automation tools to remotely
connect with the aircraft, charge vehicles,
minimize grid cost and dynamically price
without any user input. "
The cloud-based software suite was
based on work by Purdue graduate and
undergraduate students who won the
grand prize in a 2022 Federal Aviation
Administration contest. Gunady, Akshay
Rao, Sai Mudumba, Seejay Patel, and
Ethan Wright won the Smart Connected
Aviation Student Competition with their
entry " Advanced Air Mobility as an Electric
Grid Demand Response Asset. " Purdue
professor and Aerovy Mobility Chief
Scientist Daniel DeLaurentis and associate
professor Shaoshuai Mou advised the
team, along with personnel from GE
Aerospace, American Airlines and San Diego
International Airport.
Aerovy Mobility, a Purdue University-connected startup, has developed software solutions to benefit
airport and vertiport operators and real estate developers looking to establish advanced air
mobility technology at existing and potential sites. (Image provided by Electro.Aero)
Aerovy Mobility recently established a
partnership with Altaport, an automation
software company based in Salt Lake City;
Electro.Aero, an electric aviation charging
technology company based in Perth, Australia;
Greenstar Aviation Partners, an investment
firm based in New York City; and
Skyportz, a developer of vertiport infrastructure
based in South Yarra, Australia.
It also has been in discussions with
other OEMs, airports around the world,
and major U.S. airlines. The company
has several memorandums of understanding
in place. It is looking to raise
funds by the end of 2023.
" We are looking to connect with companies
and individuals with an interest in exploring
electric infrastructure at existing
airports or vertiport companies interested
in identifying locations to place infrastructure,
too, " Gunady said.
For more information, contact Steve
Martin at sgmartin@prf.org.
Securing Supply Chains with Quantum Computing
A new framework for programming quantum computers could become a powerful tool
for global security.
Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, CA
N
ew research in quantum computing at
Sandia National Laboratories is moving
science closer to being able to overcome
supply-chain challenges and restore global
security during future periods of unrest.
" Reconfiguring the supply chain on
short notice is an exceptionally difficult
optimization problem, which restricts
the agility of global trade, " said Alicia
Magann, a Truman Fellow at Sandia. She
has led the development of a new way to
design programs on quantum computers,
which she and her team think could
be especially useful for solving these
kinds of massive optimization problems
someday in the future when quantum
technology becomes more mature.
Optimization algorithms help industry
perform tasks like coordinating
trucking routes or managing financial
Tech Briefs, December 2023
assets. These problems are generally difficult
to work out, Magann said, and as
the number of variables increases, finding
good solutions becomes harder.
One of the potential long-term solutions
to solving complex optimization problems
is to use quantum computers, an emerging
technology that experts believe will be able
to find answers to some problems much
faster than supercomputers.
But building quantum computing
technology is only one of the challenges.
" There's also this other question of:
Here's a quantum computer - how do I
actually program this thing? How do I
use it? " Magann said.
Researchers around the world are actively
developing algorithms for largescale
optimizations on future technologies,
with the hope that these programs
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could help industries manage limited
resources more effectively and pivot operations
more quickly in the face of rapid
changes to the labor market, supplies
of raw materials or other logistics.
A leading idea for programming quantum
optimization algorithms has involved
coupling quantum computers and conventional
ones to solve a problem together,
called the variational approach. The
conventional computer performs an optimization
of control settings that dictate
the behavior of the quantum computer.
One issue with this approach is that
its impact is constrained by the ability of
the conventional computer to solve optimization
problems with a large number
of parameters.
Sandia Scientist Kenneth Rudinger,
who also worked on the project, said the
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