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Mechanical verification of strategies

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Abstract

This paper presents a method of representing planning domains in the Boyer-Moore logic so that we can prove mechanically whether a strategy solves a problem. Current approaches require explicit frame axioms and state constraints to be included as part of a domain specification and use a programming language for expressing strategies. These make it difficult to specify domains and verify plans efficiently. Our method avoids explicit frame axioms, since domains are specified by programming an interpreter for sequences of actions in the Boyer-Moore logic. Strategies are represented as ‘planners’, Lisp programs that take an initial state and other arguments as input and return a sequence of actions that, when executed in the given initial state, will bring about a goal state. Mechanical verification of a strategy is accomplished by proving that the corresponding planner solves all instances of the given problem. We illustrate our approach by verifying strategies in some variations of the blocks world.

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  1. Trusted Information Systems, 444 Castro Street, Suite 800, 94041, Mountain View, CA, USA

    Sakthi Subramanian

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  1. Sakthi Subramanian
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The work described here was supported in part by NSF Grant MIP-9017499.

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Subramanian, S. Mechanical verification of strategies. J Autom Reasoning 15, 69–93 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00881831

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00881831

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