Programmation par contraintes

Many computational problems can be described in terms of restrictions imposed on possible solutions. Constraint Programming is a problem-solving technique that works by incorporating such restrictions into a programming environment. Constraint Programming draws on methods from artificial intelligence, logic programming, and operations research. It has been successfully applied in a number of fields such as scheduling, computational linguistics, and computational biology. The aim of this course is to : create an understanding of the fundamental concepts underlying constraint programming, develop skills in modelling combinatorial problems, present fundamental efficient algorithms to solve these problems, and develop skills in taking advantage of strong algorithmic techniques. To achieve these goals, the course will cover the following topics : modelling combinatorial problems using constraint programming, constraint satisfaction problems and notions of consistency, efficient algorithms for fundamental problems such as linear diophantine equation systems, temporal reasoning problems, set constraints, linear programs, constraint unification problems, and phylogenetical reconstruction, a generic architecture for solving constraint problems using propagation and search, applications of constraint programming