Learning Constraint Programming Models from Data Using Generate-And-Aggregate

Authors Mohit Kumar, Samuel Kolb, Tias Guns



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Mohit Kumar
  • KU Leuven, Belgium
Samuel Kolb
  • KU Leuven, Belgium
Tias Guns
  • KU Leuven, Belgium

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Mohit Kumar, Samuel Kolb, and Tias Guns. Learning Constraint Programming Models from Data Using Generate-And-Aggregate. In 28th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 235, pp. 29:1-29:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)
https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.CP.2022.29

Abstract

Constraint programming (CP) is used widely for solving real-world problems. However, designing these models require substantial expertise. In this paper, we tackle this problem by synthesizing models automatically from past solutions. We introduce COUNT-CP, which uses simple grammars and a generate-and-aggregate approach to learn expressive first-order constraints typically used in CP as well as their parameters from data. The learned constraints generalize across instances over different sizes and can be used to solve unseen instances - e.g., learning constraints from a 4×4 Sudoku to solve a 9×9 Sudoku or learning nurse staffing requirements across hospitals. COUNT-CP is implemented using the CPMpy constraint programming and modelling environment to produce constraints with nested mathematical expressions. The method is empirically evaluated on a set of suitable benchmark problems and shows to learn accurate and compact models quickly.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Applied computing → Operations research
Keywords
  • Constraint Learning
  • Constraint Programming
  • Model Synthesis

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