Exploiting single-cycle symmetries in continuous constraint problems

Symmetries in discrete constraint satisfaction problems have been explored and exploited in the last years, but symmetries in continuous constraint problems have not received the same attention. Here we focus on permutations of the variables consisting of one single cycle. We propose a procedure tha...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Ruiz de Angulo, Vicente, Torras, Carme
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2009
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/30487
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/30487
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Constraint satisfaction
Continuous constraint satisfaction
Symmetry
Symmetric boxes
Branch-and-prune
Robots
Robotics
Descripción
Sumario:Symmetries in discrete constraint satisfaction problems have been explored and exploited in the last years, but symmetries in continuous constraint problems have not received the same attention. Here we focus on permutations of the variables consisting of one single cycle. We propose a procedure that takes advantage of these symmetries by interacting with a continuous constraint solver without interfering with it. A key concept in this procedure are the classes of symmetric boxes formed by bisecting a n-dimensional cube at the same point in all dimensions at the same time. We analyze these classes and quantify them as a function of the cube dimensionality. Moreover, we propose a simple algorithm to generate the representatives of all these classes for any number of variables at very high rates. A problem example from the chemical field and the cyclic n-roots problem are used to show the performance of the approach in practice.