48 research outputs found
Automated Design of Elevator Systems: Experimenting with Constraint-Based Approaches
System configuration and design is a well-established topic
in AI. While many successful applications exists, there are still areas of
manufacturing where AI techniques find little or no application. We focus
on one such area, namely building and installation of elevator systems,
for which we are developing an automated design and configuration tool.
The questions that we address in this paper are: (i) What are the best
ways to encode some subtasks of elevator design into constraint-based
representations? (ii) What are the best tools available to solve the encodings? We contribute an empirical analysis to address these questions
in our domain of interest, as well as the complete set of benchmarks to
foster further researc
Effective Encodings of Constraint Programming Models to SMT
Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) is a well-established methodology that generalises propositional satisfiability (SAT) by adding support for a variety of theories such as integer arithmetic and bit-vector operations. SMT solvers have made rapid progress in recent years. In part, the efficiency of modern SMT solvers derives from the use of specialised decision procedures for each theory. In this paper we explore how the Essence Prime constraint modelling language can be translated to the standard SMT-LIB language. We target four theories: bit-vectors (QF_BV), linear integer arithmetic (QF_LIA), non-linear integer arithmetic (QF_NIA), and integer difference logic (QF_IDL). The encodings are implemented in the constraint modelling tool Savile Row. In an extensive set of experiments, we compare our encodings for the four theories, showing some notable differences and complementary strengths. We also compare our new encodings to the existing work targeting SMT and SAT, and to a well-established learning CP solver. Our two proposed encodings targeting the theory of bit-vectors (QF_BV) both substantially outperform earlier work on encoding to QF_BV on a large and diverse set of problem classes
Effective encodings of constraint programming models to SMT
Funding: UK EPSRC grant EP/P015638/1.Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) is a well-established methodology that generalises propositional satisfiability (SAT) by adding support for a variety of theories such as integer arithmetic and bit-vector operations. SMT solvers have made rapid progress in recent years. In part, the efficiency of modern SMT solvers derives from the use of specialised decision procedures for each theory. In this paper we explore how the Essence Prime constraint modelling language can be translated to the standard SMT-LIB language. We target four theories: bit-vectors (QF_BV), linear integer arithmetic (QF_LIA), non-linear integer arithmetic (QF_NIA), and integer difference logic (QF_IDL). The encodings are implemented in the constraint modelling tool Savile Row. In an extensive set of experiments, we compare our encodings for the four theories, showing some notable differences and complementary strengths. We also compare our new encodings to the existing work targeting SMT and SAT, and to a well-established learning CP solver. Our two proposed encodings targeting the theory of bit-vectors (QF_BV) both substantially outperform earlier work on encoding to QF_BV on a large and diverse set of problem classes.Postprin
Cable Tree Wiring -- Benchmarking Solvers on a Real-World Scheduling Problem with a Variety of Precedence Constraints
Cable trees are used in industrial products to transmit energy and
information between different product parts. To this date, they are mostly
assembled by humans and only few automated manufacturing solutions exist using
complex robotic machines. For these machines, the wiring plan has to be
translated into a wiring sequence of cable plugging operations to be followed
by the machine. In this paper, we study and formalize the problem of deriving
the optimal wiring sequence for a given layout of a cable tree. We summarize
our investigations to model this cable tree wiring Problem (CTW) as a traveling
salesman problem with atomic, soft atomic, and disjunctive precedence
constraints as well as tour-dependent edge costs such that it can be solved by
state-of-the-art constraint programming (CP), Optimization Modulo Theories
(OMT), and mixed-integer programming (MIP) solvers. It is further shown, how
the CTW problem can be viewed as a soft version of the coupled tasks scheduling
problem. We discuss various modeling variants for the problem, prove its
NP-hardness, and empirically compare CP, OMT, and MIP solvers on a benchmark
set of 278 instances. The complete benchmark set with all models and instance
data is available on github and is accepted for inclusion in the MiniZinc
challenge 2020
Experimenting with Constraint Programming Techniques in Artificial Intelligence: Automated System Design and Verification of Neural Networks
This thesis focuses on the application of Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization techniques
in two Artificial Intelligence (AI) domains: automated design of elevator systems and
verification of Neural Networks (NNs). The three main areas of interest for my work
are (i) the languages for defining the constraints for the systems, (ii) the algorithms and
encodings that enable solving the problems considered and (iii) the tools that implement
such algorithms.
Given the expressivity of the domain description languages and the availability of effective
tools, several problems in diverse application fields have been solved successfully using
constraint satisfaction techniques. The two case studies herewith presented are no exception,
even if they entail different challenges in the adoption of such techniques. Automated design
of elevator systems not only requires encoding of feasibility (hard) constraints, but should
also take into account design preferences, which can be expressed in terms of cost functions
whose optimal or near-optimal value characterizes “good” design choices versus “poor” ones.
Verification of NNs (and other machine-learned implements) requires solving large-scale
constraint problems which may become the main bottlenecks in the overall verification
procedure.
This thesis proposes some ideas for tackling such challenges, including encoding techniques
for automated design problems and new algorithms for handling the optimization
problems arising from verification of NNs. The proposed algorithms and techniques are evaluated
experimentally by developing tools that are made available to the research community
for further evaluation and improvement