The blocks world is a planning domain in artificial intelligence. The algorithm is similar to a set of wooden blocks of various shapes and colors sitting on a table. The goal is to build one or more vertical stacks of blocks. Only one block may be moved at a time: it may either be placed on the table or placed atop another block. Because of this, any blocks that are, at a given time, under another block cannot be moved. Moreover, some kinds of blocks cannot have other blocks stacked on top of them.[1]
The simplicity of this toy world lends itself readily to classical symbolic artificial intelligence approaches, in which the world is modeled as a set of abstract symbols which may be reasoned about.