Quantum Artificial Intelligence for Earth Observation (QuAI4EO) is a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and CERN, involving two PhD students between 2021 and 2025. The goal was to study the use of quantum machine learning (QML) algorithms in image analysis, with particular focus on Earth observation images from satellites.

The focus of the work was on quantum algorithms themselves and comparing them against their classical equivalent to understand the real added value of QML. It was shown that this is indeed the case in very specific cases, but the research is still very early so extrapolating is quite challenging. Nevertheless, the contribution of these two PhDs in QML is quite significant, with a notable first-of-its-kind proof of the universal approximation theorem and the study of classical systems simulation with quantum algorithms.

Industries this type of project can also apply to:

• Quantum computing
  • Hardware
  • Software
• Earth observation
  • Climate monitoring