Abstract: | The planner of the SOMASS soma assembly system begins by searching for the way in which the parts can be disposed in the desired shape. This search is subject to the combinatorial explosion and can take many hours. This project was concerned with discovering search pruning methods to improve the speed. The strategy was to become personally expert in solving the puzzle of how to build these shapes, paying careful attention to the strategies and insights used, and then finding ways to encode these in the machine search. This was successful, leading to an average improvement in search time of a factor of nine, the greatest improvements occurring in the most complex shapes.
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