Combining Constraint Propagation and Backtracking for Distributed Engineering
Charles J. Petrie, Heecheol Jeon, Mark R. Cutkosky · 2002
We describe an agent-based approach for engineering problems in which the constraints and general control of problem solving are distributed. In order to overcome previous problems with engineering constraint solvers, we divide responsibilities between domain-specific agents, which control the overall problem solving, and generic, reusable agents. One of these generic agents is Redux 0 , which provides general problem solving bookkeeping services. Another is a Constraint Manager, which provides constraint consistency services. We demonstrate the utility of this approach on a previously-defined simple, but difficult, distributed constraint problem. This work was funded by Navy contract SHARE N00014-92-J-1833 under the US DARPA RaDEO program. An Engineering Constraint Manager Agent Constraint solving is a common function in engineering projects. As distributed and concurrent engineering become more common, the requirement to solve various kinds of constraints spanning d...