An incremental answer set programming based system for finite model computation

Issue title: Answer Set Programming

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Gebser, Martin | Sabuncu, Orkunt | Schaub, Torsten

Affiliations: Universität Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany. E-mail: {gebser, orkunt, torsten}@cs.uni-potsdam.de

Abstract: We address the problem of Finite Model Computation (FMC) of first-order theories and show that FMC can efficiently and transparently be solved by taking advantage of a recent extension of Answer Set Programming (ASP), called incremental Answer Set Programming (iASP). The idea is to use the incremental parameter in iASP programs to account for the domain size of a model. The FMC problem is then successively addressed for increasing domain sizes until an answer set, representing a finite model of the original first-order theory, is found. We implemented a system based on the iASP solver iClingo and demonstrate its competitiveness by showing that it slightly outperforms the winner of the FNT division of CADE's 2009 Automated Theorem Proving (ATP) competition on the respective benchmark collection.

Keywords: Incremental answer set programming, finite model computation

DOI: 10.3233/AIC-2011-0496

Journal: AI Communications, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 195-212, 2011