Reasoning about Solids Using Constraint Logic Programming

The embedding of constraint satisfaction on the domain of discourse into a rule-based programming paradigm like logic programming provides a powerful reasoning tool. We present an application in spatial reasoning that uses this combination to produce a clear, concise, yet very expressive system through its ability to manipulate partial information. Three-dimensional solid objects in constructive solid geometry representation are manipulated, and their spatial relationship with one another, points, or regions is reasoned about. The language used to develop this application is QUAD-CLP(), an experimental constraint logic programming language of our own design, which is equipped with a solver for quadratic and linear arithmetic constraints over the reals.