Running BQP’s platform enabled drone manufacturer Modovolo to scale physical hardware at “unprecedented speeds.”
SYRACUSE, N.Y.—BQP, a developer of quantum-accelerated simulation software, and drone manufacturer Modovolo jointly announced in August what they described as “a milestone in how quantum-inspired computing is disrupting heavy engineering.”
Modovolo focuses on building high-performance drones at “radically reduced cost.” BQP (BosonQ Psi) describes itself as a quantum-first simulation company that builds digital twin platforms for mission-critical applications. Its BQPhy platform is said to run on “today’s infrastructure, no quantum hardware required.”
Modovolo focuses on building high-performance drones at significantly lower cost. The integration of BQPhy into Modovolo’s pipeline is said to have achieved state-of-the-art UAV performance in a fraction of the usual development window. (Photo: Modovolo/PRNewswire)
By integrating BQPhy into Modovolo’s pipeline, the companies stated in a release that they bypassed the trial-and-error bottlenecks that plague heavy engineering. In doing so, they are said to have achieved state-of-the-art UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) performance in a fraction of the usual development window, while also gaining a scalable framework for future designs.
According to the release, the real barrier in aerospace and defense isn’t the speed of a single simulation. Instead, it’s the trial-and-error process, as traditional CFD (computational fluid dynamics) and structural tools limit engineers to testing only a handful of designs.
BQPhy’s QuantumNOW solver runs quantum-inspired algorithms on existing HPC/GPU infrastructure, reportedly compressing tens of thousands of simulations into a fraction of the usual time and compute.
“This isn’t about making a single simulation marginally faster; it’s about total design-space exploration,” said Abhishek Chopra, founder and CEO of BQP, in the release. “By running thousands of simulations simultaneously, BQPhy eliminates the traditional trial-and-error bottleneck. It gives forward-thinking manufacturers like Modovolo the power to discover radically optimized geometries that were previously computationally invisible, moving from software output to physical testing at a pace the industry hasn’t seen before.”
Modovolo’s “performance-to-cost” philosophy, maximizing flight time and payload while cutting cost, shaped its new, patent-pending 3D-printed propellers, optimized using BQPhy.
“We have developed our own genetic algorithms for propeller optimization, which has produced some very high-efficiency designs,” said Justin Call, co-founder and CEO of Modovolo, in the release. “But relying on traditional optimization methods was incredibly time-intensive, due to the extremely large number of potential three-dimensional geometries for the propeller. Not only in terms of the number of man-hours but also in terms of compute. Running them on our local servers would take many days to get to a single design, and more often than not, that design made no sense as calculations would get trapped in a ‘local minima.’ This would force us to re-run everything, and that could take weeks of work.”
“Propeller design is particularly difficult with existing tools because, in addition to being an error-prone, lengthy process, these existing tools only consider a small number of variables. But a propeller blade has an infinite number of variables,” said Arion Mangio, co-founder and chief technology officer of Modovolo, in the release. “At each point on the blade there are different stress points, aerodynamic considerations, performance changes. In order to truly increase performance, you need to contemplate all of these variables.
“BQPhy enabled us with the computational muscle to explore an unprecedented number of design variables at once, solving our immediate performance bottlenecks and giving us a scalable engine to tackle our next generation of complex UAV systems.”
“We had developed a proprietary process for 3D printing highly affordable propellers, but maximizing their performance through traditional tools was a slow, uphill battle,” Call added. “BQPhy acted as a true force multiplier, giving us a massive competitive leap in UAV market. With the BQP-developed propellers, we are seeing large increases in flight time and payload lift capacity.”
BQP is headquartered in Syracuse, with a hub in Bangalore, India.