Survey of constraint based scheduling systems using an artificial intelligence approach

Recently, Artificial Intelligence approaches have been used to solve the problem of constraint based scheduling. The aim is to find a feasible solution which satisfies a maximum number of constraints within a reasonable amount of time. An AI system in this domain should not replicate the human scheduler but extend his capabilities by doing more problem solving than was manually possible. The constraints are used to help reduce the search space. This paper reviews various AI techniques used in constraint based scheduling, by comparing existing systems. The aim is to help future research concerning the application of AI to constraint based scheduling, by evaluating the progress that has been made in this area.