Constructive Interval Disjunction

Gilles Trombettoni (1) , Gilles Chabert (2)

1 COPRIN - Constraints solving, optimization and robust interval analysis
2 E3I2 - Extraction et Exploitation de l'Information en Environnements Incertains

This paper presents two new filtering operators for numerical CSPs (systems with constraints over the reals) based on constructive disjunction, as well as a new splitting heuristic. The fist operator (CID) is a generic algorithm enforcing constructive disjunction with intervals. The second one (3BCID) is a hybrid algorithm mixing constructive disjunction and shaving, another technique already used with numerical CSPs through the algorithm 3B. Finally, the splitting strategy learns from the CID filtering step the next variable to be split, with no overhead. Experiments have been conducted with 20 benchmarks. On several benchmarks, CID and 3BCID produce a gain in performance of orders of magnitude over a standard strategy. CID compares advantageously to the 3B operator while being simpler to implement. Experiments suggest to fix the CID-related parameter in 3BCID, offering thus to the user a promising variant of 3B.

Domaines: Intelligence artificielle [cs.AI]

Gilles Trombettoni, Gilles Chabert. Constructive Interval Disjunction. CP'07 - 13th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, 2007, Providence, United States. pp.635-650, ⟨10.1007/978-3-540-74970-7_45⟩. ⟨hal-00486726⟩