A Bound-Independent Pruning Technique to Speeding up Tree-Based Complete Search Algorithms for Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems

Complete search algorithms are important methods for solving Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems (DCOPs), which generally utilize bounds to prune the search space. However, obtaining high-quality lower bounds is quite expensive since it requires each agent to collect more information aside from its local knowledge, which would cause tremendous traffic overheads. Instead of bothering for bounds, we propose a Bound-Independent Pruning (BIP) technique for existing tree-based complete search algorithms, which can independently reduce the search space only by exploiting local knowledge. Specifically, BIP enables each agent to determine a subspace containing the optimal solution only from its local constraints along with running contexts, which can be further exploited by any search strategies. Furthermore, we present an acceptability testing mechanism to tailor existing tree-based complete search algorithms to search the remaining space returned by BIP when they hold inconsistent contexts. Finally, we prove the correctness of our technique and the experimental results show that BIP can significantly speed up state-of-the-art tree-based complete search algorithms on various standard benchmarks

Peach Maturity Estimation by Sonic Impulse Testing

Agricultural Engineerin

HS-CAI: A Hybrid DCOP Algorithm via Combining Search with Context-based Inference

Search and inference are two main strategies for optimally solving Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems (DCOPs). Recently, several algorithms were proposed to combine their advantages. Unfortunately, such algorithms only use an approximated inference as a one-shot preprocessing phase to construct the initial lower bounds which lead to inefficient pruning under the limited memory budget. On the other hand, iterative inference algorithms (e.g., MB-DPOP) perform a context-based complete inference for all possible contexts but suffer from tremendous traffic overheads. In this paper, $(i)$ hybridizing search with context-based inference, we propose a complete algorithm for DCOPs, named {HS-CAI} where the inference utilizes the contexts derived from the search process to establish tight lower bounds while the search uses such bounds for efficient pruning and thereby reduces contexts for the inference. Furthermore, $(ii)$ we introduce a context evaluation mechanism to select the context patterns for the inference to further reduce the overheads incurred by iterative inferences. Finally, $(iii)$ we prove the correctness of our algorithm and the experimental results demonstrate its superiority over the state-of-the-art