In artificial intelligence and operations research, constraint satisfaction is the process of finding a solution through
a set of constraints that impose conditions that the variables must satisfy. A solution is therefore a set of values for the variables that satisfies all constraints—that is, a point in the feasible region.
The techniques used in constraint satisfaction depend on the kind of constraints being considered. Often used are constraints on a finite domain, to the point that constraint satisfaction problems are typically identified with problems based on constraints on a finite domain. Such problems are usually solved via search, in particular a form of backtracking or local search. Constraint propagation are other methods used on such problems; most of them are incomplete in general, that is, they may solve the problem or prove it unsatisfiable, but not always. Constraint propagation methods are also used in conjunction with search to make a given problem simpler to solve. Other considered kinds of constraints are on real or rational numbers; solving problems on these constraints is done via variable elimination or the simplex algorithm.
Constraint satisfaction as a general problem originated in the field of artificial intelligence in the 1970s (see for example ). However, when the constraints are expressed as multivariate linear equations defining (in)equalities, the field goes back to Joseph Fourier in the 19th century: George Dantzig's invention of the Simplex Algorithm for Linear Programming (a special case of mathematical optimization) in 1946 has allowed determining feasible solutions to problems containing hundreds of variables.
During the 1980s and 1990s, embedding of constraints into a programming language were developed. The first languages devised expressly with intrinsic support for constraint programming was Prolog. Since then, constraint-programming libraries have become available in other languages, such as C++ or Java (e.g., Choco for Java).
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In constraint satisfaction, local consistency conditions are properties of constraint satisfaction problems related to the consistency of subsets of variables or constraints. They can be used to reduce the search space and make the problem easier to solve. Various kinds of local consistency conditions are leveraged, including node consistency, arc consistency, and path consistency. Every local consistency condition can be enforced by a transformation that changes the problem without changing its solutions.
Constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) are mathematical questions defined as a set of objects whose state must satisfy a number of constraints or limitations. CSPs represent the entities in a problem as a homogeneous collection of finite constraints over variables, which is solved by constraint satisfaction methods. CSPs are the subject of research in both artificial intelligence and operations research, since the regularity in their formulation provides a common basis to analyze and solve problems of many seemingly unrelated families.
Backtracking is a class of algorithms for finding solutions to some computational problems, notably constraint satisfaction problems, that incrementally builds candidates to the solutions, and abandons a candidate ("backtracks") as soon as it determines that the candidate cannot possibly be completed to a valid solution. The classic textbook example of the use of backtracking is the eight queens puzzle, that asks for all arrangements of eight chess queens on a standard chessboard so that no queen attacks any other.
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