12806220
Temporal Planning using Subgoal Partitioning and Resolution in SGPlan
In this paper, we present the partitioning of mutual-exclusion (mutex) constraints in temporal planning problems and its implementation in the SGPlan4 planner. Based on the strong locality of mutex constraints observed in many benchmarks of the Fourth International Planning Competition (IPC4), we propose to partition the constraints of a planning problem into groups based on their subgoals. Constraint partitioning leads to significantly easier subproblems that are similar to the original problem and that can be efficiently solved by the same planner with some modifications to its objective function. We present a partition-and-resolve strategy that looks for locally optimal subplans in constraint-partitioned temporal planning subproblems and that resolves those inconsistent global constraints across the subproblems. We also discuss some implementation details of SGPlan4, which include the resolution of violated global constraints, techniques for handling producible resources, landmark analysis, path finding and optimization, search-space reduction, and modifications of Metric-FF when used as a basic planner in SGPlan4. Last, we show results on the sensitivity of each of these techniques in quality-time trade-offs and experimentally demonstrate that SGPlan4 is effective for solving the IPC3 and IPC4 benchmarks.
16524073
Partitioning of temporal planning problems in mixed space using the theory of extended saddle points
We study the partitioning of temporal planning problems formulated as mixed-integer nonlinear programming problems, develop methods to reduce the search space of partitioned subproblems, and propose algorithms for resolving unsatisfied global constraints. The algorithms are based on the necessary and sufficient extended saddle-point condition for constrained local minimization developed in this paper. When compared with the MIPS planner in solving some PDDL2.1 planning problems, our distributed implementation of MIPS shows significant improvements in time and quality.
14272034
Optimal Anytime Constrained Simulated Annealing for Constrained Global Optimization
In this paper we propose an optimal anytime version of constrained simulated annealing (CSA) for solving constrained nonlinear programming problems (NLPs). One of the goals of the algorithm is to generate feasible solutions of certain prescribed quality using an average time of the same order of magnitude as that spent by the original CSA with an optimal cooling schedule in generating a solution of similar quality. Here, an optimal cooling schedule is one that leads to the shortest average total number of probes when the original CSA with the optimal schedule is run multiple times until it finds a solution. Our second goal is to design an anytime version of CSA that generates gradually improving feasible solutions as more time is spent, eventually finding a constrained global minimum (CGM). In our study, we have observed a monotonically non-decreasing function relating the success probability of obtaining a solution and the average completion time of CSA, and an exponential function relating the objective target that CSA is looking for and the average completion time. Based on these observations, we have designed CSAAT-ID the anytime CSA with iterative deepening that schedules multiple runs of CSA using a set of increasing cooling schedules and a set of improving objective targets. We then prove the optimality of our schedules and demonstrate experimentally the results on four continuous constrained NLPs. CSAAT-ID can be generalized to solving discrete, continuous, and mixed-integer NLPs, since CSA is applicable to solve problems in these three classes. Our approach can also be generalized to other stochastic search algorithms, such as genetic algorithms, and be used to determine the optimal time for each run of such algorithms.
1446328
Solving Large-Scale Nonlinear Programming Problems by Constraint Partitioning
In this paper, we present a constraint-partitioning approach for finding local optimal solutions of large-scale mixed-integer nonlinear programming problems (MINLPs). Based on our observation that MINLPs in many engineering applications have highly structured constraints, we propose to partition these MINLPs by their constraints into subproblems, solve each subproblem by an existing solver, and resolve those violated global constraints across the subproblems using our theory of extended saddle points. Constraint partitioning allows many MINLPs that cannot be solved by existing solvers to be solvable because it leads to easier subproblems that are significant relaxations of the original problem. The success of our approach relies on our ability to resolve violated global constraints efficiently, without requiring exhaustive enumerations of variable values in these constraints. We have developed an algorithm for automatically partitioning a large MINLP in order to minimize the number of global constraints, an iterative method for determining the optimal number of partitions in order to minimize the search time, and an efficient strategy for resolving violated global constraints. Our experimental results demonstrate significant improvements over the best existing solvers in terms of solution time and quality in solving a collection of mixed-integer and continuous nonlinear constrained optimization benchmarks. 
 
Research supported by National Science Foundation Grant IIS 03-12084.
10007833
Constraint Partitioning for Solving Planning Problems with Trajectory Constraints and Goal Preferences
The PDDL3 specifications include soft goals and trajectory constraints for distinguishing highquality plans among the many feasible plans in a solution space. To reduce the complexity of solving a large PDDL3 planning problem, constraint partitioning can be used to decompose its constraints into subproblems of much lower complexity. However, constraint locality due to soft goals and trajectory constraints cannot be effectively exploited by existing subgoal-partitioning techniques developed for solving PDDL2.2 problems. In this paper, we present an improved partition-andresolve strategy for supporting the new features in PDDL3. We evaluate techniques for resolving violated global constraints, optimizing goal preferences, and achieving subgoals in a multivalued representation. Empirical results on the 5th International Planning Competition (IPC5) benchmarks show that our approach is effective and significantly outperforms other competing planners.
16055310
Step-by-Step Regression: A More Efficient Alternative for Polynomial Multiple Linear Regression in Stream Cube
Facing tremendous and potentially infinite stream data, it is impossible to record them entirely. Thus synopses are required to be generated timely to capture the underlying model for stream management systems. Traditionally, curve fitting through Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) is a powerful and efficient modeling tool. In order to further accelerate its processing efficiency, we propose Step-by-step Regression (SR) as a more efficient alternative. As revealed in experiments, it speeds up for more than 40 times. In addition, inspired by previous work, we integrated SR into cube environment through similar compression technique to perform online analytical processing and mining over data stream. Finally, experiments show that SR not only significantly alleviates the computation pressure on the front ends of data stream management systems, but also results in a much smaller stream cube for on line analysis and real-time surveillance.
8967502
The impact of incorrectly speculated memory operations in a multithreaded architecture
The speculated execution of threads in a multithreaded architecture, plus the branch prediction used in each thread execution unit, allows many instructions to be executed speculatively, that is, before it is known whether they actually needed by the program. In this study, we examine how the load instructions executed on what turn out to be incorrectly executed program paths impact the memory system performance. We find that incorrect speculation (wrong execution) on the instruction and thread-level provides an indirect prefetching effect for the later correct execution paths and threads. By continuing to execute the mispredicted load instructions even after the instruction or thread-level control speculation is known to be incorrect, the cache misses observed on the correctly executed paths can be reduced by 16 to 73 percent, with an average reduction of 45 percent. However, we also find that these extra loads can increase the amount of memory traffic and can pollute the cache. We introduce the small, fully associative wrong execution cache (WEC) to eliminate the potential pollution that can be caused by the execution of the mispredicted load instructions. Our simulation results show that the WEC can improve the performance of a concurrent multithreaded architecture up to 18.5 percent on the benchmark programs tested, with an average improvement of 9.7 percent, due to the reductions in the number of cache misses.
1747046
UCSOA: User-Centric Service-Oriented Architecture
This paper introduces a new user-centric service-oriented architecture (UCSOA) that allows end users to compose applications. UCSOA is an extension of consumer-centric service-oriented architecture (CCSOA), which is an extension of conventional SOA. The conventional SOA is producer-centric because service providers publish their services and service consumers must search available services to compose their applications. CCSOA is different as it allows consumers publish their needs including workflows and services, and let producers to produce services to meet the requirements. Based on CCSOA, UCSOA provides support for end users. An application builder is an engineer who has both domain and programming knowledge, while an end user has little knowledge on programming and thus UCSOA needs to allow nontechnical persons to compose their applications. This paper presents the concepts, architecture, enabling techniques, and illustrative examples
62612563
Enabling location-based services in wireless LAN hotspots
The wide deployment of IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN (WLAN) makes possible application services developed in WLAN hotspots. Owing to the small cell size in WLAN hotspots, it is practical to develop location-based services with the awareness of the WLAN access points (APs) that mobile devices currently access. In this paper, we propose an effective location determination technique using the inherent SNMP support in WLAN APs. It is shown that the current location of a mobile device can be determined from the SNMP traps sent by APs. Since the SNMP-based approach doesn't need any particular software or hardware in mobile devices, location-based services can be widely deployed, especially in public WLAN hotspots. To further enable location-based services through the WWW, this paper also considers the location determination of a mobile device from its IP address, retrieved in a WWW environment. In addition, we propose a web service framework for location-based services in WLAN hotspots. Thus, location-based services can be developed in a standard way.
14368338
Optimal radial contour tracking by dynamic programming
A common problem in most active contour methods is that the recursive searching scheme can only return a local optimal solution. Furthermore, the internal energy of the snake is not strong enough to control the shape of the contour. To overcome these difficulties, we develop a causal internal energy term based on a radial contour representation to encode the smooth constraint of the contour, and develop a global shape priori to control contour's shape and position based on object's dynamics. The causality nature of the representation allows us to efficiently find global optimal solution using dynamic programming. To validate the efficacy and robustness of the proposed approach, we apply this approach to track people in bad illumination and cluttered environments. We report promising results in the paper.
2310959
XKvalidator: a constraint validator for XML
The role of XML in data exchange is evolving from one of merely conveying the structure of data to one that also conveys its semantics. In particular, several proposals for key and foreign key constraints have recently appeared, and aspects of these proposals have been adopted within XMLSchema.In this paper, we examine the problem of checking keys and foreign keys in XML documents using a validator based on SAX. The algorithm relies on an indexing technique based on the paths found in key definitions, and can be used for checking the correctness of an entire document (bulk checking) as well as for checking updates as they are made to the document (incremental checking). The asymptotic performance of the algorithm is linear in the size of the document or update. Furthermore, experimental results demonstrate reasonable performance.