Implied Constraints for Automaton Constraints

14 pages•Published: December 18, 2015

Maria Andreina Francisco, Pierre Flener and Justin Pearson

Abstract

Automata allow many constraints on sequences of variables to be specified in a high-level way for constraint programming solvers. An automaton with accumulators induces a decomposition of the specified constraint into a conjunction of constraints with existing inference algorithms, called propagators. Towards improving propagation, we design a fully automated tool that selects, in an off-line process, constraints that are implied by such a decomposition. We show that a suitable problem-specific choice among the tool-selected implied constraints can considerably improve solving time and propagation, both on a decomposition in isolation and on entire constraint problems containing the decomposition.

Keyphrases: automaton constraint, global constraints, implied constraints

In: Georg Gottlob, Geoff Sutcliffe and Andrei Voronkov (editors). GCAI 2015. Global Conference on Artificial Intelligence, vol 36, pages 113-126.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/q3k7
	https://doi.org/10.29007/m767

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{GCAI2015:Implied_Constraints_Automaton_Constraints,
  author    = {Maria Andreina Francisco and Pierre Flener and Justin Pearson},
  title     = {Implied Constraints for Automaton Constraints},
  booktitle = {GCAI 2015. Global Conference on Artificial Intelligence},
  editor    = {Georg Gottlob and Geoff Sutcliffe and Andrei Voronkov},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Computing},
  volume    = {36},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-7340},
  url       = {/publications/paper/q3k7},
  doi       = {10.29007/m767},
  pages     = {113-126},
  year      = {2015}}

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