Many different approaches have been applied to constraint satisfaction. These range from complete backtracking algorithms to sophisticated distributed configurations. However, most research effort in the field of constraint satisfaction algorithms has concentrated on the use of a single algorithm for solving all problems. At the same time, a consensus appears to have developed to the effect that it is unlikely that any single algorithm is always the best choice for all classes of problem. In this paper we argue that an adaptive approach should play an important part in constraint satisfaction. This approach relaxes the commitment to using a single algorithm once search commences. As a result, we claim that it is possible to undertake a more focused approach to problem solving, allowing for the correction of bad algorithm choices and for capitalising on opportunities for gain by dynamically changing to more suitable candidates.

There has been substantial recent interest in two new families of search techniques. One family consists of nonsystematic methods such as gsat; the other contains systematic approaches that use a polynomial amount of justification information to prune the search space. This paper introduces a new technique that combines these two approaches. The algorithm allows substantial freedom of movement in the search space but enough information is retained to ensure the systematicity of the resulting analysis. Bounds are given for the size of the justification database and conditions are presented that guarantee that this database will be polynomial in the size of the problem in question. 1 INTRODUCTION The past few years have seen rapid progress in the development of algorithms for solving constraintsatisfaction problems, or csps. Csps arise naturally in subfields of AI from planning to vision, and examples include propositional theorem proving, map coloring and scheduling problems. The probl...

Unpredictability in the running time of complete search procedures can often be explained by the phenomenon of “heavy-tailed cost distributions”, meaning that at any time during the experiment there is a non-negligible probability of hitting a problem that requires exponentially more time to solve than any that has been encountered before (Gomes et al. 1998a). We present a general method for introducing controlled randomization into complete search algorithms. The “boosted ” search methods provably eliminate heavy-tails to the right of the median. Furthermore, they can take advantage of heavy-tails to the left of the median (that is, a nonnegligible chance of very short runs) to dramatically shorten the solution time. We demonstrate speedups of several orders of magnitude for state-of-the-art complete search procedures running on hard, real-world problems.

It has recently been shown that local search is surprisingly good at finding satisfying assignments for certain classes of CNF formulas [24]. In this paper we demonstrate that the power of local search for satisfiability testing can be further enhanced by employinga new strategy, called "mixed random walk", for escaping from local minima. We present experimental results showing how this strategy allows us to handle formulas that are substantially larger than those that can be solved with basic local search. We also present a detailed comparison of our random walk strategy with simulated annealing. Our results show that mixed random walk is the superior strategy on several classes of computationally difficult problem instances. Finally, we present results demonstrating the effectiveness of local search with walk for solving circuit synthesis and diagnosis problems.

In this paper we reexamine the place and role of stable model semantics in logic programming and contrast it with a least Herbrand model approach to Horn programs. We demonstrate that inherent features of stable model semantics naturally lead to a logic programming system that offers an interesting alternative to more traditional logic programming styles of Horn logic programming, stratified logic programming and logic programming with well-founded semantics. The proposed approach is based on the interpretation of program clauses as constraints. In this setting programs do not describe a single intended model, but a family of stable models. These stable models encode solutions to the constraint satisfaction problem described by the program. Our approach imposes restrictions on the syntax of logic programs. In particular, function symbols are eliminated from the language. We argue that the resulting logic programming system is well-attuned to problems in the class NP, has a well-defined domain of applications, and an emerging methodology of programming. We point out that what makes the whole approach viable is recent progress in implementations of algorithms to compute stable models of propositional logic programs. 1

Recently several local hill-climbing procedures for propositional satisability havebeen proposed, which are able to solve large and di cult problems beyond the reach ofconventional algorithms like Davis-Putnam. By the introduction of some new variants of these procedures, we provide strong experimental evidence to support the conjecture that neither greediness nor randomness is important in these procedures. One of the variants introduced seems to o er signi cant improvements over earlier procedures. In addition, we investigate experimentally how their performance depends on their parameters. Our results suggest that run-time scales less than simply exponentially in the problem size. 1

. The satisfiability (SAT) problem is a core problem in mathematical logic and computing theory. In practice, SAT is fundamental in solving many problems in automated reasoning, computer-aided design, computeraided manufacturing, machine vision, database, robotics, integrated circuit design, computer architecture design, and computer network design. Traditional methods treat SAT as a discrete, constrained decision problem. In recent years, many optimization methods, parallel algorithms, and practical techniques have been developed for solving SAT. In this survey, we present a general framework (an algorithm space) that integrates existing SAT algorithms into a unified perspective. We describe sequential and parallel SAT algorithms including variable splitting, resolution, local search, global optimization, mathematical programming, and practical SAT algorithms. We give performance evaluation of some existing SAT algorithms. Finally, we provide a set of practical applications of the sat...

New approaches to solving constraint satisfaction problems using iterative improvement techniques have been found to be successful on certain, very large problems such as the million queens. However, on highly constrained problems it is possible for these methods to get caught in local minima. In this paper we present genet, a connectionist architecture for solving binary and general constraint satisfaction problems by iterative improvement. genet incorporates a learning strategy to escape from local minima. Although genet has been designed to be implemented on vlsi hardware, we present empirical evidence to show that even when simulated on a single processor genet can outperform existing iterative improvement techniques on hard instances of certain constraint satisfaction problems.

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This paper presents a search technique for scheduling problems, called Heuristic-Biased Stochastic Sampling (HBSS). The underlying assumption behind the HBSS approach is that strictly adhering to a search heuristic often does not yield the best solution and, therefore, exploration off the heuristic path can prove fruitful. Within the HBSS approach, the balance between heuristic adherence and exploration can be controlled according to the confidence one has in the heuristic. By varying this balance, encoded as a bias function, the HBSS approach encompasses a family of search algorithms of which greedy search and completely random search are extreme members. We present empirical results from an application of HBSS to the realworld problem of observation scheduling. These results show that with the proper bias function, it can be easy to outperform greedy search. Introducing HBSS This paper presents a search technique, called Heuristic-Biased Stochastic Sampling (HBSS), that was design...