Related papers: Propagation by Selective Initialization and Its Ap…
Solving a system of nonlinear inequalities is an important problem for which conventional numerical analysis has no satisfactory method. With a box-consistency algorithm one can compute a cover for the solution set to arbitrarily close…
Arithmetic constraints on integer intervals are supported in many constraint programming systems. We study here a number of approaches to implement constraint propagation for these constraints. To describe them we introduce integer interval…
Constraint propagation is one of the techniques central to the success of constraint programming. To reduce search, fast algorithms associated with each constraint prune the domains of variables. With global (or non-binary) constraints, the…
We propose here a number of approaches to implement constraint propagation for arithmetic constraints on integer intervals. To this end we introduce integer interval arithmetic. Each approach is explained using appropriate proof rules that…
Constraint propagation is a general algorithmic approach for pruning the search space of a CSP. In a uniform way, K. R. Apt has defined a computation as an iteration of reduction functions over a domain. He has also demonstrated the need…
We describe the use of array expressions as constraints, which represents a consequent generalisation of the "element" constraint. Constraint propagation for array constraints is studied theoretically, and for a set of domain reduction…
Constraint programming is a family of techniques for solving combinatorial problems, where the problem is modelled as a set of decision variables (typically with finite domains) and a set of constraints that express relations among the…
We provide here a proof theoretic account of constraint programming that attempts to capture the essential ingredients of this programming style. We exemplify it by presenting proof rules for linear constraints over interval domains, and…
This paper draws on diverse areas of computer science to develop a unified view of computation: (1) Optimization in operations research, where a numerical objective function is maximized under constraints, is generalized from the numerical…
Survey Propagation is an algorithm designed for solving typical instances of random constraint satisfiability problems. It has been successfully tested on random 3-SAT and random $G(n,\frac{c}{n})$ graph 3-coloring, in the hard region of…
Parity constraints, common in application domains such as circuit verification, bounded model checking, and logical cryptanalysis, are not necessarily most efficiently solved if translated into conjunctive normal form. Thus, specialized…
Approximations of optimization problems arise in computational procedures and sensitivity analysis. The resulting effect on solutions can be significant, with even small approximations of components of a problem translating into large…
We present a new approach to enhancing Answer Set Programming (ASP) with Constraint Processing techniques which allows for solving interesting Constraint Satisfaction Problems in ASP. We show how constraints on finite domains can be…
A wide range of constraints can be compactly specified using automata or formal languages. In a sequence of recent papers, we have shown that an effective means to reason with such specifications is to decompose them into primitive…
Bound propagation is an important Artificial Intelligence technique used in Constraint Programming tools to deal with numerical constraints. It is typically embedded within a search procedure ("branch and prune") and used at every node of…
We show that several constraint propagation algorithms (also called (local) consistency, consistency enforcing, Waltz, filtering or narrowing algorithms) are instances of algorithms that deal with chaotic iteration. To this end we propose a…
Constraint propagation algorithms implement logical inference. For efficiency, it is essential to control whether and in what order basic inference steps are taken. We provide a high-level framework that clearly differentiates between…
Constraint propagation algorithms form an important part of most of the constraint programming systems. We provide here a simple, yet very general framework that allows us to explain several constraint propagation algorithms in a systematic…
Constraints that may be obtained by composition from simpler constraints are present, in some way or another, in almost every constraint program. The decomposition of such constraints is a standard technique for obtaining an adequate…
An algorithm is proposed, analyzed, and tested for solving continuous nonlinear-equality-constrained optimization problems where the objective and constraint functions are defined by expectations or averages over large, finite numbers of…