Learning-Based Abstractions for Nonlinear Constraint Solving

Learning-Based Abstractions for Nonlinear Constraint Solving

Sumanth Dathathri, Nikos Arechiga, Sicun Gao, Richard M. Murray

Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Main track. Pages 592-599. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2017/83

We propose a new abstraction refinement procedure based on machine learning to improve the performance of nonlinear constraint solving algorithms on large-scale problems. The proposed approach decomposes the original set of constraints into smaller subsets, and uses learning algorithms to propose sequences of abstractions that take the form of conjunctions of classifiers. The core procedure is a refinement loop that keeps improving the learned results based on counterexamples that are obtained from partial constraints that are easy to solve. Experiments show that the proposed techniques significantly improve the performance of state-of-the-art constraint solvers on many challenging benchmarks. The mechanism is capable of producing intermediate symbolic abstractions that are also important for many applications and for understanding the internal structures of hard constraint solving problems.
Keywords:
Constraints and Satisfiability: Constraint Satisfaction
Constraints and Satisfiability: Constraints and Satisfiability
Constraints and Satisfiability: Satisfiability