A MAXIMUM NEURAL-NETWORK APPROACH FOR N-QUEENS PROBLEMS

A novel neural network approach using the maximum neuron model is pres ented for N-queens problems. The goal of the N-queens problem is to fi nd a set of locations of N queens on an N x N chessboard such that no pair of queens commands each other. The maximum neuron model proposed by Takefuji et al. has been applied to two optimization problems where the optimization of objective functions is requested without constrai nts. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of the maximum neuron m odel for constraint satisfaction problems through the N-queens problem . The performance is verified through simulations in up to 500-queens problems on the sequential mode, the N-parallel mode, and the N-2-para llel mode, where our maximum neural network shows the far better perfo rmance than the existing neural networks.