Interactive Blocksworld Application Showcasing Planning Techniques

Fast Downward is a classical planner using heuristical search. The planner uses many advanced planning techniques that are not easy to teach, since they usually rely on complex data structures. To introduce planning techniques to the user an interactive application is created. This application uses an illustrative example to showcase planning techniques: Blocksworld.
Blocksworld is an easy understandable planning problem which allows a simple representation of a state space. It is implemented in the Unreal Engine and provides an interface to the Fast Downward planner. Users can explore a state space themselves or have Fast Downward generate plans for them.
The concept of heuristics as well as the state space are explained and made accessible to the user. The user experiences how the planner explores a state space and which techniques the planner uses.