Solving tiling puzzles with quantum annealing

Abstract

To solve tiling puzzles, such as "pentomino" or "tetromino" puzzles, we need to find the correct solutions out of numerous combinations of rotations or piece locations. Solving this kind of combinatorial optimization problem is a very difficult problem in computational science, and quantum computing is expected to play an important role in this field. In this article, we propose a method and obtained specific formulas to find solutions for tetromino tiling puzzles using a quantum annealer. In addition, we evaluated these formulas using a simulator and using actual hardware DW2000Q.