@conference {4167, title = {BnB-ADOPT+ with Several Soft AC Levels}, booktitle = {European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-10)}, year = {2010}, month = {16/08/2010}, pages = {67-72}, address = {Lisbon, Portugal}, abstract = {Distributed constraint optimization problems can be solved by BnB-ADOPT$^+$, a distributed asynchronous search algorithm. In the centralized case, local consistency techniques applied to constraint optimization have been shown very beneficial to increase performance. In this paper, we combine BnB-ADOPT$^+$ with different levels of soft arc consistency, propagating unconditional deletions caused by either the enforced local consistency or by distributed search. The new algorithm maintains BnB-ADOPT$^+$ optimality and termination. In practice, this approach decreases substantially BnB-ADOPT$^+$ requirements in communication cost and computation effort when solving commonly used benchmarks.}, keywords = {arc consistency, Distributed constraint optimization, soft constraints}, author = {Patricia Gutierrez and Pedro Meseguer} }