5 CONSTRAINT SATISFACTION PROBLEMS

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5CONSTRAINTSATISFACTIONPROBLEMSInwhich weseehowtreatingstatesasmore thanjustlittleblack boxesleadsto theinventionofa range ofpowerfulnew search methodsanda deeperunderstandingofproblemstructure and4 exploredtheideathatproblemscanbesolvedby searchinginaspaceofstates. Thesestatescanbeevaluatedbydomain-specif icheuristicsandtestedtoseewhetherthey ,however,eachstateis is representedbyanarbi-BLACKBOXtrarydatastr ucturethatcanbeaccessedonlybytheproblem- specificroutines thesuccessorfunction,heuristicfunction, , whosestatesandgoaltestconformtoa standard,structured,andverysimplereprese ntation( ).Searchal-REPRESENTATIONgorithmscanbede finedthattake advantageofthestructureofstatesandusegen eral-purposeratherthanproblem-specifiche uristicsto enablethesolutionoflargeproblems( ).

This chapter examines constraint satisfaction problems, whose states and goal test REPRESENTATION conform to a standard, structured, and very simple representation (Section 5.1). Search al-gorithms can be defined that take advantage of the structure of states and use general-purpose

  Satisfaction, Chapter, Problem, Constraints, Constraint satisfaction problems