Solving Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems Using Logic Programming

This paper explores the use of answer set programming (ASP) in solving distributed constraint optimization problems (DCOPs). It makes the following contributions: (i)~It shows how one can formulate DCOPs as logic programs; (ii)~It introduces ASP-DPOP, the first DCOP algorithm that is based on logic programming; (iii)~It experimentally shows that ASP-DPOP can be up to two orders of magnitude faster than DPOP (its imperative-programming counterpart) as well as solve some problems that DPOP fails to solve due to memory limitations; and (iv)~It demonstrates the applicability of ASP in the wide array of multi-agent problems currently modeled as DCOPs.