Forward pruning, also known as selective search, is now employed in many strong game-playing programs. In this paper, we introduce RankCut – a domain independent forward pruning technique which makes use of move ordering, and prunes once no better move is likely to be available. Since gameplaying programs already perform move ordering to improve the performance of αβ search, this information is...

The idea behind forward checking is to check forward so that a wrong decision can be detected in early stage during search and thus futile search space can be pruned. However constraint propagation in forward checking may be overdone in certain situations. In this paper we suggest a way to delay constraint evaluation in forward checking with backmarking. Conflict-directed backtracking can also ...

We present a proof procedure that combines backward reasoning with logic programs and forward reasoning with integrity constraints. We illustrate the use of the proof procedure as the inference engine underlying agents. Roughly speaking, the backward reasoning component of the proof procedure is responsible for the deliberative behaviour of agents, whereas the forward reasoning component is res...