Functional constraints are an important constraint class in Constraint Programming (CP) systems, in particular for Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) systems. CP systems with finite domain constraints usually employ CSP-based solvers which use local consistency, e.g. arc consistency. We introduce a new approach which is based instead on variable substitution. We obtain efficient algorithms for ...

The popular use of backtracking as a control strategy for theorem proving in PROLOG and in Truth-MaintenanceSystems (TMS) led to increased interest in various schemes for enhancing the efficiency of backtrack search. Researchers have referred to these enhancement schemes by the names ‘ ‘Intelligent Backtracking’ ’ (in PROLOG), ‘ ‘Dependencydirected-backtracking” (in TMS) and others. Those impro...

A general model of problem-solving processes based on misconception elimination is presented to simulate both impasses and solving processes. The model operates an goal-related rules ond a set of constraint rules in the farm of “IF (state or goal), DO NOT (Action)” for the explicit constraints in the instructions and the implicit constraints that come from misconceptions of legal moves. When im...

The representation of both scales of cost and scales of benefit is very natural in a decision-making problem: scales of evaluation of decisions are often bipolar. The aim of this paper is to provide algebraic structures for the representation of bipolar rules, in the spirit of the algebraic approaches of constraint satisfaction. The structures presented here are general enough to encompass a la...

This paper examines the synthesis of the five degree-of-freedom robot formed by links connected by a revolute, prismatic and spherical joint to form an RPS serial chain. The reachable workspace of this robot is a right circular hyperboloid that defines a constraint equation with 10 dimensional parameters. Evaluating this equation on 10 arbitrary spatial positions yields a polynomial system of t...

We propose an improved symbolic algorithm for the verification of linear hybrid automata with large discrete state spaces (where an explicit representation of discrete states is difficult). Here both the discrete part and the continuous part of the hybrid state space are represented by one symbolic representation called LinAIGs. LinAIGs represent (possibly non-convex) polyhedra extended by bool...

Constraint Programming is an attractive approach for solving AI planning problems by modelling them as Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs). However, formulating effective constraint models of complex planning problems is challenging, and CSPs resulting from standard approaches often require further enhancement to perform well. Common subexpression elimination is a general technique for impr...