Global Hull Consistency with Local Search for Continuous Constraint Solving

This paper addresses constraint solving over continuous domains in the context of decision making, and discusses the trade-off between precision in the definition of the solution space and the computational effort required. In alternative to local consistency, which is usually maintained in handling continuous constraints, we discuss maintaining global hull-consistency. Experimental results show that this may be an appropriate choice, achieving acceptable precision with relatively low computational cost. The approach relies on efficient algorithms and the best results are obtained with the integration of a local search procedure within interval constraint propagation.