Automatically detecting neighbourhood constraint interactions using Comet

Local Search has been shown to be capable of producing high quality solutions in a variety of hard constraint and optimisation problems. Typically implementing a Local Search algorithm is done in a problem specic manner. In the last few years a variety of approaches have emerged focussed on easing the implementation and creating a clean separation between the algorithm and problem. We present a system which can deduce information about the interactions between problem constraints and the search neighbourhoods whilst maintaining a loose coupling between these components. We apply this technique to the International Timetabling Competition instances and show an implementation expressed in Comet.