Interpretation in terms of I-spaces

An alternative formulation will now be given to help understand the connection to I-spaces of a set of environments. The state space, as defined previously, could instead be defined as a configuration space, ${\cal C}= {\mathbb{Z}}\times {\mathbb{Z}}$. Let $q \in {\cal C}$ denote a configuration. Suppose that each possible environment corresponds to one way to assign costs to all of the edges in a configuration transition graph. The set $E$ of all possible environments for this problem seems to be all possible ways to assign costs, $l(q,u)$. The state space can now be defined as ${\cal C}\times E$, and for each state, $x = (q,e) \in X$, the configuration and complete set of costs are specified. Initially, it is guessed that the robot is in some particular $e \in E$. If a cost mismatch is discovered, this means that a different environment model is now assumed because a transition cost is different from what was expected. The costs should actually be written as $l(x,u) = l(q,e,u)$, which indicates the dependency of the costs on the particular environment is assumed.

A nondeterministic I-state corresponds to a set of possible cost assignments, along with their corresponding configurations. Since the method requires assigning costs that have not yet been observed, it takes a guess and assumes that one particular environment in the nondeterministic I-state is the correct one. As cost mismatches are discovered, it is realized that the previous guess lies outside of the updated nondeterministic I-state. Therefore, the guess is changed to incorporate the new cost information. As this process evolves, the nondeterministic I-state continues to shrink. Note, however, that in the end, the robot may solve the problem while being incorrect about the precise $e \in E$. Some tiles are never visited, and their true costs are therefore unknown. A default assumption about their costs was made to solve the problem; however, the true $e \in E$ can only be known if all tiles are visited. It is only true that the final assumed default values lie within the final nondeterministic I-state.