---
title: "The Role of Preprocessing in Problem Solving Systems"
authors:
  - "Clive Dawson"
  - "Laurent Siklóssy"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1977/105"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1977/0105.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1977
pages: "465-470"
track: "Problem-solving and Search"
keywords:
---

# The Role of Preprocessing in Problem Solving Systems

Clive Dawson, Laurent Siklóssy

*Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 465-470.

## Abstract

We describe REFLECT, a problem solver in simulated robot worlds. REFLECT has successfully solved a variety of non-linear problems described as a conjunction of subtasks, including most of those found in the literature. First, during a prep recessing phase, the system explores its capabilities in the environment it is presented with. Various intrinsic properties of the given operators are inferred, such as the unattainability of certain conjunctive tasks. Macro operators are built, again considering only the given operators. REFLECT is then ready to accept problems, and proceeds by conducting backward heuristic search on a variation of a regular . state-space graph termed a Goal-Ke mel graph. Attention is not focused on any one subtask in particular, so that a global view of the problem is always maintained.