Constraints are inherent in most spatial datasets. However, they are often not defined explicitly and therefore cannot be enforced. This leads to the need for an explicit formalization of spatial constraints. In order to identify the diverse formalization requirements, previous research on constraint classification and usage in both data integration and generalization is analyzed. Also differen...

Earlier work on scheduling by autonomous systems has demonstrated that schedules in the form of simple temporal networks, with intervals of values for possible event-times, can be made "dispatchable", i.e., executable incrementally in real time with guarantees against failure due to unfortunate event-time selections. These schedules can be built prior to execution by an automated Planner/ Sched...

The manufacturing of microsystems such as micromotors and micropumps among other examples is a very important emerging market. One big challenge in microproduction is mass customization, that is, the automated production of a large variety of products that are highly adapted to special customer needs in small batch sizes. These requirements call for a highly flexible manufacturing system. This ...

Traditional flexible flow shop scheduling cannot adapt to the work processes with existence of parallel machines, and blocks or limits the processes with no-wait constraints. Firstly, according to the problem in NWBFFSSP, which minimizes the maximum time used in the flow shop, an optimal solving model has been designed to realize the flexible flow shop scheduling with multi constraints; besides...

We developed a visual system generator called “Rainbow” which can handle layout constraints. The system can interactively layout figures while parsing them and make the parsed figures more understandable. Rainbow can deal with “soft layout constraints.” Soft layout constraints automatically layout entire figures by using graph drawing algorithms. Soft layout constraints are more flexible than c...

This paper presents a method for using expected utility distributions in the execution of flexible, contingent plans. A utility distribution maps the possible start times of an action to the expected utility of the plan suffix starting with that action. The contingent plan encodes a tree of possible courses of action and includes flexible temporal constraints and resource constraints. When exec...

Even today, some types of fuel cells have been already used in practical applications such as combined heat and power generation applications and space vehicle applications. Though research and development activities are still required, the fuel cell technology is one of the most important technologies that allow us to draw the environment friendly society in the twenty-first century. This sect...