309 research outputs found
Hybrid VCSPs with crisp and conservative valued templates
A constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) is a problem of computing a
homomorphism between two relational
structures. Analyzing its complexity has been a very fruitful research
direction, especially for fixed template CSPs, denoted , in
which the right side structure is fixed and the left side
structure is unconstrained.
Recently, the hybrid setting, written ,
where both sides are restricted simultaneously, attracted some attention. It
assumes that is taken from a class of relational structures
that additionally is closed under inverse homomorphisms. The last
property allows to exploit algebraic tools that have been developed for fixed
template CSPs. The key concept that connects hybrid CSPs with fixed-template
CSPs is the so called "lifted language". Namely, this is a constraint language
that can be constructed from an input . The
tractability of that language for any input is a
necessary condition for the tractability of the hybrid problem.
In the first part we investigate templates for which the
latter condition is not only necessary, but also is sufficient. We call such
templates widely tractable. For this purpose, we construct from
a new finite relational structure and define
as a class of structures homomorphic to . We
prove that wide tractability is equivalent to the tractability of
. Our proof is based on the key observation
that is homomorphic to if and only if the core of
is preserved by a Siggers polymorphism. Analogous
result is shown for valued conservative CSPs.Comment: 21 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1504.0706
Hybrid tractability of soft constraint problems
The constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) is a central generic problem in
computer science and artificial intelligence: it provides a common framework
for many theoretical problems as well as for many real-life applications. Soft
constraint problems are a generalisation of the CSP which allow the user to
model optimisation problems. Considerable effort has been made in identifying
properties which ensure tractability in such problems. In this work, we
initiate the study of hybrid tractability of soft constraint problems; that is,
properties which guarantee tractability of the given soft constraint problem,
but which do not depend only on the underlying structure of the instance (such
as being tree-structured) or only on the types of soft constraints in the
instance (such as submodularity). We present several novel hybrid classes of
soft constraint problems, which include a machine scheduling problem,
constraint problems of arbitrary arities with no overlapping nogoods, and the
SoftAllDiff constraint with arbitrary unary soft constraints. An important tool
in our investigation will be the notion of forbidden substructures.Comment: A full version of a CP'10 paper, 26 page
The complexity of finite-valued CSPs
We study the computational complexity of exact minimisation of
rational-valued discrete functions. Let be a set of rational-valued
functions on a fixed finite domain; such a set is called a finite-valued
constraint language. The valued constraint satisfaction problem,
, is the problem of minimising a function given as
a sum of functions from . We establish a dichotomy theorem with respect
to exact solvability for all finite-valued constraint languages defined on
domains of arbitrary finite size.
We show that every constraint language either admits a binary
symmetric fractional polymorphism in which case the basic linear programming
relaxation solves any instance of exactly, or
satisfies a simple hardness condition that allows for a
polynomial-time reduction from Max-Cut to
Algebraic Properties of Valued Constraint Satisfaction Problem
The paper presents an algebraic framework for optimization problems
expressible as Valued Constraint Satisfaction Problems. Our results generalize
the algebraic framework for the decision version (CSPs) provided by Bulatov et
al. [SICOMP 2005]. We introduce the notions of weighted algebras and varieties
and use the Galois connection due to Cohen et al. [SICOMP 2013] to link VCSP
languages to weighted algebras. We show that the difficulty of VCSP depends
only on the weighted variety generated by the associated weighted algebra.
Paralleling the results for CSPs we exhibit a reduction to cores and rigid
cores which allows us to focus on idempotent weighted varieties. Further, we
propose an analogue of the Algebraic CSP Dichotomy Conjecture; prove the
hardness direction and verify that it agrees with known results for VCSPs on
two-element sets [Cohen et al. 2006], finite-valued VCSPs [Thapper and Zivny
2013] and conservative VCSPs [Kolmogorov and Zivny 2013].Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1207.6692 by other author
On the Efficiency of Backtracking Algorithms for Binary Constraint Satisfaction Problems
International audienceThe question of tractable classes of constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) has been studied for a long time, and is now a very active research domain. However, studies of tractable classes are typically very theoretical. They usually introduce classes of instances together with polynomial time algorithms for recognizing and solving them, and the algorithms can be used only for the new class. In this paper, we address the issue of tractable classes of CSPs from a different perspective. We investigate the complexity of classical, generic algorithms for solving CSPs (such as Forward Checking). We introduce a new parameter for measuring their complexity and derive new complexity bounds. By relating the complexity of CSP algorithms to graph-theoretic parameters, our analysis allows us to point at new tractable classes, which can be solved directly by the usual CSP algorithms in polynomial time, and without the need to recognize the classes in advance
A BTP-Based Family of Variable Elimination Rules for Binary CSPs
International audienceThe study of broken-triangles is becoming increasingly ambitious , by both solving constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) in polynomial time and reducing search space size through value merging or variable elimination. Considerable progress has been made in extending this important concept, such as dual broken-triangle and weakly broken-triangle, in order to maximize the number of captured tractable CSP instances and/or the number of merged values. Specifically, m-wBTP allows to merge more values than BTP. k-BTP, WBTP and m-BTP permit to capture more tractable instances than BTP. Here, we introduce a new weaker form of BTP, which will be called m-fBTP for flexible broken-triangle property. m-fBTP allows on the one hand to eliminate more variables than BTP while preserving satisfiability and on the other to define new bigger tractable class for which arc consistency is a decision procedure. Likewise, m-fBTP permits to merge more values than BTP but less than m-wBTP
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