Hole in one: Using qualitative reasoning for solving hard physical puzzle problems

Xiaoyu Ge, Jae Hee Lee, Jochen Renz, Peng Zhang

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

    2 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The capability of determining the right sequence of physical actions to achieve a given task is essential for AI that interacts with the physical world. The great difficulty in developing this capability has two main causes: (1) the world is continuous and therefore the action space is infinite, (2) due to noisy perception, we do not know the exact physical properties of our environment and therefore cannot precisely simulate the consequences of a physical action. In this paper we define a realistic physical action selection problem that has many features common to these kind of problems, the minigolf hole-in-one problem: given a two-dimensional minigolf-like obstacle course, a ball and a hole, determine a single shot that hits the ball into the hole. We assume gravity as well as noisy perception of the environment. We present a method that solves this problem similar to how humans are approaching these problems, by using qualitative reasoning and mental simulation, combined with sampling of actions in the real environment and adjusting the internal knowledge based on observing the actual outcome of sampled actions. We evaluate our method using difficult minigolf levels that require the ball to bounce at several objects in order to hit the hole and compare with existing methods.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationFrontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications
    EditorsGal A. Kaminka, Maria Fox, Paolo Bouquet, Eyke Hullermeier, Virginia Dignum, Frank Dignum, Frank van Harmelen
    PublisherIOS Press BV
    Pages1762-1763
    Number of pages2
    ISBN (Electronic)9781614996712
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2016
    Event22nd European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI 2016 - The Hague, Netherlands
    Duration: 29 Aug 20162 Sept 2016

    Publication series

    NameFrontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications
    Volume285
    ISSN (Print)0922-6389
    ISSN (Electronic)1879-8314

    Conference

    Conference22nd European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI 2016
    Country/TerritoryNetherlands
    CityThe Hague
    Period29/08/162/09/16

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