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:
“Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“I thought when I was a young man that I would conquer the world with truth. I thought I would lead an army greater than Alexander ever dreamed of. Not to conquer nations, but to liberate mankind. With truth. With the golden sound of the Word. But only a few of them heard. Only a few of you understood. The rest of you put on black and sat in chapel.”
—Philip Dunne (1908–1992)