A Generic, Collaborative Framework for Interval Constraint Solving

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Fernández, Antonio J.

Affiliations: Dpto. Lenguajes y Ciencias de la Computación, ETSII, University of Málaga, D.P. 29071, Spain E‐mail: [email protected]

Abstract: The paper abstracts the contents of a PhD dissertation entitled A Generic, Collaborative Framework for Interval Constraint Solving which has been recently defended. This thesis presents a generic framework for defining and solving interval constraints on any set of domains (finite or infinite) that are lattices. This framework combines a number of characteristics desirable in any constraint system such as transparency, on both constraints and computation domains (i.e., it follows a glass box approach where new constraints can be user defined and new, possibly compound, constraint domains can be constructed from existing domains using lattice combinators), cooperativity (so that different solvers, possibly on distinct domains, can communicate and hence, cooperate in solving a problem) and genericity (i.e., it can be applied on any computation domain with lattice structure).

Keywords: Constraint, lattice, cooperation, propagation, indexical

Journal: AI Communications, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 171-174, 2004