beCool is a research group of the ICTEAM institute (Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics) at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium. BeCool is active in Constraint Programming and Local Search.
Constraint Programming (CP) is a powerful paradigm for modeling and solving complex combinatorial (optimization) problems.
It integrates techniques from artificial intelligence, computer science, operational research and optimization.
CP separates the modeling of the problem from the search for solutions.
It offers high level modeling languages based on constraints.
CP proposes two complementary search mechanisms.
Standard CP is based on systematic tree search coupled with pruning techniques to remove infeasible solutions.
Constraint-Based Local Search allows heuristic search based on the exploration of neighborhoods.
The beCool group is developing a state-of-the-art open-source constraint programming solver called OscaR (www.oscarlib.org).
In addition to constantly improving the constraint programming technology, we also solve real-life applications such as:
- patient scheduling problems
- traffic engineering problems
- industrial scheduling problems
- vehicle routing (including stochastic versions)
- data mining and frequent pattern mining
- railway (traffic optimization and interlocking verification)
- production planning
