Constraint Based Reasoning

Constraint-based reasoning is an important area of automated reasoning in artificial intelligence, with many applications. These include configuration and design problems, planning and scheduling, temporal and spatial reasoning, defeasible and causal reasoning, machine vision and language understanding, qualitative and diagnostic reasoning, and expert systems. Constraint-Based Reasoning presents current work in the field at several levels: theory, algorithms, languages, applications, and hardware. Constraint-based reasoning has connections to a wide variety of fields, including formal logic, graph theory, relational databases, combinatorial algorithms, operations research, neural networks, truth maintenance, and logic programming. The ideal of describing a problem domain in natural, declarative terms and then letting general deductive mechanisms synthesize individual solutions has to some extent been realized, and even embodied, in programming languages. Contents Introduction, E. C. Freuder, A. K. Mackworth * The Logic of Constraint Satisfaction, A. K. Mackworth * Partial Constraint Satisfaction, E. C. Freuder, R. J. Wallace * Constraint Reasoning Based on Interval Arithmetic: The Tolerance Propagation Approach, E. Hyvonen * Constraint Satisfaction Using Constraint Logic Programming, P. Van Hentenryck, H. Simonis, M. Dincbas * Minimizing Conflicts: A Heuristic Repair Method for Constraint Satisfaction and Scheduling Problems, S. Minton, M. D. Johnston, A. B. Philips, and P. Laird * Arc Consistency: Parallelism and Domain Dependence, P. R. Cooper, M. J. Swain * Structure Identification in Relational Data, R. Dechter, J. Pearl * Learning to Improve Constraint-Based Scheduling, M. Zweben, E. Davis, B. Daun, E. Drascher, M. Deale, M. Eskey * Reasoning about Qualitative Temporal Information, P. van Beek * A Geometric Constraint Engine, G. A. Kramer * A Theory of Conflict Resolution in Planning, Q. Yang A Bradford Book.

Much of AI research is about problem-solving strategies, and several techniques have been crystalized. One such technique is constraint satisfaction or reasoning based on relations. Constraint-based reasoning is used to solve a wide field of problems, and recently constraint techniques have been incorporated into logic programming languages, yielding a whole new field of research and application: constraint logic programming. Constraint satisfaction techniques have become part of almost all introductory books on AI. This monograph is about constraint satisfaction. It differs from others in that it presents all approaches under a common, generalizing view: dynamic constraints. This new way of viewing constraints provides new insights about the different approaches, and forms a very practical basis for teaching constraint-based reasoning. A uniform view of the constraint world is also a good basis for constraint research. This text is not intended to be a self-contained textbook on constraint-based reasoning, but rather a coherent text on an interesting view of the field.

"Much of AI research is about problem-solving strategies, and several techniques have been crystalized. One such technique is constraint satisfaction or reasoning based on relations. Constraint-based reasoning is used to solve a wide field of problems, and recently constraint techniques have been incorporated into logic programming languages, yielding a whole new field of research and application: constraint logic programming. Constraint satisfaction techniques have become part of almost all introductory books on AI. This monograph is about constraint satisfaction. It differs from others in that it presents all approaches under a common, generalizing view: dynamic constraints. This new way of viewing constraints provides new insights about the different approaches, and forms a very practical basis for teaching constraint-based reasoning. A uniform view of the constraint world is also a good basis for constraint research. This text is not intended to be a self-contained textbook on constraint-based reasoning, but rather a coherent text on an interesting view of the field."--PUBLISHER'S WEBSITE.

Solving challenging computational problems involving time has been a critical component in the development of artificial intelligence systems almost since the inception of the field. This book provides a concise introduction to the core computational elements of temporal reasoning for use in AI systems for planning and scheduling, as well as systems that extract temporal information from data. It presents a survey of temporal frameworks based on constraints, both qualitative and quantitative, as well as of major temporal consistency techniques. The book also introduces the reader to more recent extensions to the core model that allow AI systems to explicitly represent temporal preferences and temporal uncertainty. This book is intended for students and researchers interested in constraint-based temporal reasoning. It provides a self-contained guide to the different representations of time, as well as examples of recent applications of time in AI systems.

Constraint satisfaction problems are significant in the domain of automated reasoning for artificial intelligence. They can be applied to the modeling and solving of a wide range of combinatorial applications such as planning, scheduling and resource sharing in a variety of practical domains such as transportation, production, supply-chains, network management and human resource management. In this book we study new techniques for solving constraint satisfaction problems, with a special focus on solution adaptation applied to agent reasoning.

Autonomous agents have become a vibrant research and development topic in recent years attracting activity and attention from various areas. The basic agent concept incorporates proactive autonomous units with goal-directed-behaviour and communication capabilities. The book focuses on autonomous agents that can act in a goal directed manner under real time constraints and incomplete knowledge, being situated in a dynamic environment where resources may be restricted. To satisfy such complex requirements, the author improves, combines, and applies results from areas like planning, constraint programming, and local search. The formal framework developed is evaluated by application to the field of computer games, which fit the problem context very well since most of them are played in real time and provide a highly interactive environment where environmental situations are changing rapidly.

Case-based reasoning in design is becoming an important approach to computer-support for design as well as an important component in understanding the design process. Design has become a major focus for problem solving paradigms due to its complexity and open-ended nature. This book presents a clear description of how case-based reasoning can be applied to design problems, including the representation of design cases, indexing and retrieving design cases, and the range of paradigms for adapting design cases. With a focus on design, this book differs from others that provide a generalist view of case-based reasoning. This volume provides two important contributions to the area: * a general description of the issues and alternatives in applying case-based reasoning to design, and * a description of specific implementations of case-based design. Through this combination, the reader will learn about both the general issues and the practical problems in supporting design through case-based reasoning. This book was prepared to fill a gap in the literature on the unique problems that design introduces to computational paradigms developed in computer science. It also addresses the needs of computational support for design problem solving from both theoretical and practical perspectives.