Abstract

A major source of inefficiency in automated problem solvers is their inability to decompose problems and work on the more difficult parts first. This issue can be addressed by employing a hierarchy of abstract problem spaces to focus the search. Instead of solving a problem in the original problem space, a problem is first solved in an abstract space, and the abstract solution is then refined at successive levels in the hierarchy. While this use of abstraction can significantly reduce search, it is often difficult to find good abstractions, and the abstractions must be manually engineered by the designer of a problem domain.

Date

September 22, 1991

Authors

Craig Alan Knoblock

Institution

Carnegie Mellon University