Encoding Partial Constraint Satisfaction in the Semiring-Based Framework for Soft Constraints

  • Authors:
  • Stefano Bistarelli;Eugene C. Freuder;Barry O'Sullivan

  • Affiliations:
  • CNR and Universitá degli Studi "G. Dýannunzio";University College Cork;University College Cork

  • Venue:
  • ICTAI '04 Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

The partial constraint satisfaction paradigm focuses on solving relaxations of problems that either do not admit solutions, or that are either impractical or impossible to solve completely. The semiring-based framework for soft constraints is a unifying model for a variety of extensions of the constraint satisfaction formalism. For example, the semiring-based framework can represent weighted, fuzzy, probabilistic and set-based constraint satisfaction problems. In this paper, we discuss how the semiring-based framework for soft constraints can be used to model partial constraint satisfaction problems. We show how the semiring framework can be used to capture a notion of distance between a solution and a problem based on the known distance metrics used in the partial constraint satisfaction literature. These solution-problem distance metrics can be seen as providing lower-bounds on the distance between a problem and its relaxation.