Compiling Metric Temporal Answer Set Programming

TL;DR

This paper introduces a scalable computational method for Metric Answer Set Programming that handles quantitative temporal constraints efficiently by integrating difference constraints externally, avoiding grounding bottlenecks.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach combining ASP with difference constraints to manage temporal constraints without sacrificing scalability.

Findings

Decouples metric ASP from time granularity.

Maintains scalability with fine-grained timing constraints.

Effectively handles durations and deadlines in ASP.

Abstract

We develop a computational approach to Metric Answer Set Programming (ASP) to allow for expressing quantitative temporal constrains, like durations and deadlines. A central challenge is to maintain scalability when dealing with fine-grained timing constraints, which can significantly exacerbate ASP's grounding bottleneck. To address this issue, we leverage extensions of ASP with difference constraints, a simplified form of linear constraints, to handle time-related aspects externally. Our approach effectively decouples metric ASP from the granularity of time, resulting in a solution that is unaffected by time precision.