Toward an automaton Constraint for Local Search

Toward an automaton Constraint for Local Search

Blog Article

We explore the idea of using finite automata to implement new constraints for local search (this is already a successful technique in constraint-based global search).We show how it is possible to maintain incrementally the violations Outdoor Table of a constraint and its decision variables from an automaton that describes a ground Candles checker for that constraint.We establish the practicality of our approach idea on real-life personnel rostering problems, and show that it is competitive with the approach of [Pralong, 2007].