Answer Set Counting and its Applications

We have focused on Answer Set Programming (ASP), more specifically, answer set counting, exploring both exact and approximate methodologies. We developed an exact ASP counter, sharpASP, which utilizes a compact encoding for propositional formulas, significantly enhancing efficiency compared to existing methods that often struggle with inefficient encodings. Our evaluations indicate that sharpASP outperforms current ASP counters on several benchmarks. In addition, we proposed an approximate ASP counter, named ApproxASP, a hashing-based counter integrating Gauss-Jordan elimination within the ASP solver, clingo. As a practical application, we employed ApproxASP for network reliability estimation, demonstrating superior performance over both traditional reliability estimators and #SAT-based methods.

Exact ASP Counting with Compact Encodings

Answer Set Programming (ASP) has emerged as a promising paradigm in knowledge representation and automated reasoning owing to its ability to model hard combinatorial problems from diverse domains in a natural way. Building on advances in propositional SAT solving, the past two decades have witnessed the emergence of well-engineered systems for solving the answer set satisfiability problem, i.e., finding models or answer sets for a given answer set program. In recent years, there has been growing interest in problems beyond satisfiability, such as model counting, in the context of ASP. Akin to the early days of propositional model counting, state-of-the-art exact answer set counters do not scale well beyond small instances. Exact ASP counters struggle with handling larger input formulas. The primary contribution of this paper is a new ASP counting framework, called sharpASP, which counts answer sets avoiding larger input formulas. This relies on an alternative way of defining answer sets that allows for the lifting of key techniques developed in the context of propositional model counting. Our extensive empirical analysis over 1470 benchmarks demonstrates significant performance gain over current state-of-the-art exact answer set counters. Specifically, by using sharpASP, we were able to solve 1062 benchmarks with PAR2 score of 3082 whereas using prior state-of-the-art, we could only solve 895 benchmarks with a PAR2 score of 4205, all other experimental conditions being the same.

Image Contrast Enhancement using Fuzzy Technique with Parameter Determination using Metaheuristics

In this work, we have presented a way to increase the contrast of an image. Our target is to find a transformation that will be image specific. We have used a fuzzy system as our transformation function. To tune the system according to an image, we have used Genetic Algorithm and Hill Climbing in multiple ways to evolve the fuzzy system and conducted several experiments. Different variants of the method are tested on several images and two variants that are superior to others in terms of fitness are selected. We have also conducted a survey to assess the visual improvement of the enhancements made by the two variants. The survey indicates that one of the methods can enhance the contrast of the images visually.