Transforming Ordered Constraint Hierarchies into Ordinary Constraint Systems

In this paper, we propose ordered constraint hierarchies and a non-trivial error function to model and solve over-constrained real-world problems adequatly. We substantiate our proposition by an example. Then we present a new method to transform constraint hierarchies into equivalent ordinary constraint systems. For practial applications, we present a modiied algorithm based on an incomplete nite domain constraint solver. We conclude with a prototype implementation of the method and some aspects about our future work.