Combining Answer Set Programming and domain heuristics for solving hard industrial problems (Application Paper). Issue 5 (14th October 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: DODARO, CARMINE; GASTEIGER, PHILIP; LEONE, NICOLA; MUSITSCH, BENJAMIN; RICCA, FRANCESCO; SHCHEKOTYKHIN, KOSTYANTYN
• Editors: Carro, Manuel; King, Andy
• Is Part Of: Theory and practice of logic programming. Volume 16:Issue 5/6(2016)
• Page Start: 653
• Page End: 669
• Publication Date: 2016-10-14
• Subjects: Answer Set Programming, -- Domain Heuristics, -- Industrial Applications; Logic programming -- Periodicals; Artificial intelligence -- Computer programs -- Periodicals; Constraint programming (Computer science) -- Periodicals; 005.115
• DOI: 10.1017/S1471068416000284
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1471-0684

Abstract

Abstract: Answer Set Programming (ASP) is a popular logic programming paradigm that has been applied for solving a variety of complex problems. Among the most challenging real-world applications of ASP are two industrial problems defined by Siemens: the Partner Units Problem (PUP) and the Combined Configuration Problem (CCP). The hardest instances of PUP and CCP are out of reach for state-of-the-art ASP solvers. Experiments show that the performance of ASP solvers could be significantly improved by embedding domain-specific heuristics, but a proper effective integration of such criteria in off-the-shelf ASP implementations is not obvious. In this paper the combination of ASP and domain-specific heuristics is studied with the goal of effectively solving real-world problem instances of PUP and CCP. As a byproduct of this activity, the ASP solverwasp was extended with an interface that eases embedding new external heuristics in the solver. The evaluation shows that our domain-heuristic-driven ASP solver finds solutions for all the real-world instances of PUP and CCP ever provided by Siemens.