Blocks world assignment

You are being asked to write a simple robot planner and simulator. Your planner will be tested by giving it an initial configuration of blocks and a goal configuration, and it must move the blocks from the initial to the goal configuration.

The best description of the assignment is available on the web, in the classnotes. Click on
Classroom 2000: captured lectures
from the main class page, and check out the first 3 slides and audio for lecture 6.

An example program demonstrating graphics and simple simulation is in blocks-world1.tar. This example runs on SunOS. The Makefile generates the following commands:
cga% make
cc -g -target sun4 -c example.c
cc -g -target sun4 -c views.c
cc -g -target sun4 -c graphics-x11.c
cc -g example.o views.o graphics-x11.o -o example -lX11 -lm
graphics-x11.c and views.c are graphics related programs. example.c is what you are interested in. Note that this really should be written in C++ rather than the K&R C it was written in, and take full advantage of object oriented approaches.

A second example program demonstrating graphics and simple simulation is in blocks-world2.tar. This example runs on SGIs with Open Inventor.

• sgi.c++ is a C++ file that handles all the Inventor mumbo jumbo.
• blocks-world.c is a C file that actually does the simulation.
• communicate.h describes the data structures shared by sgi.c++ and blocks-world.c
• blocks-world.iv describes the objects in the Inventor format.
• Makefile contains information on how to compile all of this.