The blocks world is one of the most famous planning domains in artificial intelligence. The program was created by Terry Winograd and is a limited-domain natural-language system that can understand typed commands and move blocks around on a surface.
Imagine a set of cubes (blocks) sitting on a table. The goal is to build one or more vertical stacks of blocks. The catch is that only one block may be moved at a time: it may either be placed on the table or placed atop another block. Because of this, any blocks that are, at a given time, under another block cannot be moved.
The simplicity of this toy world lends itself readily to symbolic or classical A.I. approaches, in which the world is modeled as a set of abstract symbols which may be reasoned about.
Theses/projects which took place in Blocks World:
- Terry Winograd's SHRDLU
- Patrick Winston's structural concept learner
It is shown that the best version of blocks world is NP-hard.
Famous quotes containing the words blocks and/or world:
“In any case, raw aggression is thought to be the peculiar province of men, as nurturing is the peculiar province of women.... The psychologist Erik Erikson discovered that, while little girls playing with blocks generally create pleasant interior spaces and attractive entrances, little boys are inclined to pile up the blocks as high as they can and then watch them fall down: “the contemplation of ruins,” Erikson observes, “is a masculine specialty.””
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“When I read of the vain discussions of the present day about the Virgin Birth and other old dogmas which belong to the past, I feel how great the need is still of a real interest in the religion which builds up character, teaches brotherly love, and opens up to the seeker such a world of usefulness and the beauty of holiness.”
—Olympia Brown (1835–1900)