Modelling Dynamic Programming-Based Global Constraints in Constraint Programming


Visentin A., Prestwich S. D., Rossi R., TARIM Ş. A.

6th World Congress on Global Optimization, WCGO 2019, Metz, Fransa, 8 - 10 Temmuz 2019, cilt.991, ss.417-427 identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Tam Metin Bildiri
  • Cilt numarası: 991
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1007/978-3-030-21803-4_42
  • Basıldığı Şehir: Metz
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Fransa
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.417-427
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: Constraint programming, Dynamic programming, Encoding, MIP
  • Hacettepe Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Dynamic Programming (DP) can solve many complex problems in polynomial or pseudo-polynomial time, and it is widely used in Constraint Programming (CP) to implement powerful global constraints. Implementing such constraints is a nontrivial task beyond the capability of most CP users, who must rely on their CP solver to provide an appropriate global constraint library. This also limits the usefulness of generic CP languages, some or all of whose solvers might not provide the required constraints. A technique was recently introduced for directly modelling DP in CP, which provides a way around this problem. However, no comparison of the technique with other approaches was made, and it was missing a clear formalisation. In this paper we formalise the approach and compare it with existing techniques on MiniZinc benchmark problems, including the flow formulation of DP in Integer Programming. We further show how it can be improved by state reduction methods.