A Hopfield-Type Neural Network Based Model for Temporal Constraints

In this paper we present an approximation method based on discrete Hopfield neural network (DHNN) for solving temporal constraint satisfaction problems. This method is of interest for problems involving numeric and symbolic temporal constraints and where a solution satisfying the constraints of the problem needs to be found within a given deadline. More precisely the method has the ability to provide a solution with a quality proportional to the allocated process time. The quality of the solution corresponds here to the number of satisfied constraints. This property is very important for real world applications including reactive scheduling and planning and also for over constrained problems where a complete solution cannot be found. Experimental study, in terms of time cost and quality of the solution provided, of the DHNN based method we propose provides promising results comparing to the other exact methods based on branch and bound and approximation methods based on stochastic local search.