Branching interval algebra: An almost complete picture

Abstract

Branching Algebra is the natural branching-time generalization of Allen's Interval Algebra. As in the linear case, the consistency problem for Branching Algebra is NP-hard. Branching Algebra has many potential applications in different areas of Artificial Intelligence; therefore, being able to efficiently solve classical problems expressed in Branching Algebra is very important. This can be achieved in two steps: first, by identifying expressive enough, yet tractable fragments of the whole algebra, and, second, by using such fragments to boost the performances of a backtracking algorithm for the whole language. In this paper we study the properties of several such fragments, both from the algebraic and the computational point of view, and we give an almost complete picture of tractable and non-tractable fragments of the Branching Algebra.