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Introduction
General Problem Solving Approaches
o Breadth First Search
o Depth First Search
o Iterative Deepening Search
o Hill Climbing
o Simulated Annealing
Heuristic Search
o Heuristic Search for OR Graphs
Introduction
Common
experience reveals that a search problem is associated with two important issues: first ‘what
to search’ and secondly ‘where to search’. The first one is
generally referred to as ‘the key’, while the second one is termed ‘search
space’. In AI the search space is generally referred to as a collection of states
and is thus called state space. Unlike common search space, the state space in
most of the problems in AI is not completely known, prior to solving the
problem. So, solving a problem in AI calls for two phases: the generation of
the space of states and the searching of the desired problem state in that space.
Further, since the whole state space for a problem is quite large, generation of
the whole space prior to search may cause a significant blockage of storage,
leaving a little for the search part. To overcome this problem, the state space
is expanded in steps and the desired state, called “the goal”, is searched after
each incremental expansion of the state space.
There exist quite a large number of problem solving techniques in AI that rely
on search. The simplest among them is the generate and test method. The
algorithm for the generate and test method can be formally stated as follows:
It is clear from the above algorithm that the algorithm continues the
possibility of exploring a new state in each iteration of the repeat-until loop
and exits only when the current state is equal to the goal. Most important part
in the algorithm is to generate a new state. This is not an easy task. If
generation of new states is not feasible, the algorithm should be terminated.
In our simple algorithm, we, however, did not include this intentionally to
keep it simplified.
But how does one generate the states of a problem? To formalize this, we
define a four tuple, called state space, denoted by
where
nodes represent the set of existing states in the search space;
an arc denotes an operator applied to an existing state to cause
transition to another state;
goal denotes the desired state to be identified in the nodes; and
current represents the state, now generated for matching with the goal.
We will now present two typical algorithms for generating the state
space for search. These are depth first search and breadth first search.
The breadth first search algorithm visits the nodes of the tree along its
breadth, starting from the level with depth 0 to the maximum depth. It can be
easily realized with a queue. For instance, consider the tree, given in figure.
Here, the nodes in the tree are traversed following their ascending ordered labels.
Procedure Breadth-first-search
Begin
Time Complexity
For the sake of analysis, we consider a tree of equal branching factor from
each node = b and largest depth = d. Since the goal is not located within
depth (d-1), the number of false search is given by
Further, the first state within the fringe nodes could be the goal. On the
other hand, the goal could be the last visited node in the tree. Thus, on an
average, the number of fringe nodes visited is given by
Consequently, the total number of nodes visited in an average case becomes
Space Complexity
The maximum number of nodes will be placed in the queue, when the
leftmost node at depth d is inspected for comparison with the goal. The
queue length under this case becomes bd. The space complexity of the
algorithm that depends on the queue length, in the worst case, thus, is of the
order of bd.
In order to reduce the space requirement, the generate and test algorithm
is realized in an alternative manner, as presented below.
The depth first search generates nodes and compares them with the goal along
the largest depth of the tree and moves up to the parent of the last visited
node, only when no further node can be generated below the last visited node.
After moving up to the parent, the algorithm attempts to generate a new
offspring of the parent node. The above principle is employed recursively to
each node of a tree in a depth first search. One simple way to realize the
recursion in the depth first search algorithm is to employ a stack. A stackbased
realization of the depth first search algorithm is presented below.
Begin
In the above algorithm, a starting node is placed in the stack, the top of
which is pointed to by the stack-top. For examining the node, it is popped
out from the stack. If it is the goal, the algorithm terminates, else its children
are pushed into the stack in any order. The process is continued until the stack
is empty. The ascending order of nodes in fig. A represents its traversal on
the tree by depth first manner. The contents of the stack at the first few
iterations are illustrated below in fig. B. The arrowhead in the figure denotes
the position of the stack-top.
Space Complexity
If we find the goal at the leftmost position at depth d, then the number of
nodes examined = (d +1). On the other hand, if we find the goal at the
extreme right at depth d, then the number of nodes examined include all the
nodes in the tree, which is
This is the average case time complexity of the depth first search algorithm.
Since for large depth d, the depth first search requires quite a large
runtime, an alternative way to solve the problem is by controlling the depth
of the search tree. Such an algorithm, where the user mentions the initial depth cut-off at each
iteration, is called an Iterative Deepening Depth First
Search or simply an Iterative deepening search.
When the initial depth cut-off is one, it generates only the root node and
examines it. If the root node is not the goal, then depth cut-off is set to two
and the tree up to depth 2 is generated using typical depth first search.
Similarly, when the depth cut-off is set to m, the tree is constructed up to
depth m by depth first search. One may thus wonder that in an iterative
deepening search, one has to regenerate all the nodes excluding the fringe
nodes at the current depth cut-off. Since the number of nodes generated by
depth first search up to depth h is
The last pass in the algorithm results in a successful node at depth d, the
average time complexity of which by typical depth first search is given by
Thus the total average time complexity is given by
The iterative deepening search thus does not take much extra time, when
compared to the typical depth first search. The unnecessary expansion of the
entire tree by depth first search, thus, can be avoided by iterative deepening. A
formal algorithm of iterative deepening is presented below.
Procedure Iterative-deepening
Begin
o 1. Set current depth cutoff =1;
o 2. Put the initial node into a stack, pointed to by stack-top;
o 3. While the stack is not empty and the depth is within the
o given depth cut-off do
Begin
Pop stack to get the stack-top element;
if stack-top element = goal, return it and stop
else push the children of the stack-top in any order
into the stack;
End.
o End While;
o 4. Increment the depth cut-off by 1 and repeat
o through step 2;
End.
The breadth first, depth first and the iterative deepening search can be
equally used for Generate and Test type algorithms. However, while the
breadth first search requires an exponential amount of memory, the depth first
search calls for memory proportional to the largest depth of the tree. The
iterative deepening, on the other hand, has the advantage of searching in a
The ‘generate and test’ type of search algorithms presented above only
expands the search space and examines the existence of the goal in that space.
An alternative approach to solve the search problems is to employ a function
f(x) that would give an estimate of the measure of distance of the goal from
node x. After f(x) is evaluated at the possible initial nodes x, the nodes are sorted in
ascending order of their functional values and pushed into a stack in
the ascending order of their ‘f’ values. So, the stack-top element has the least f
value. It is now popped out and compared with the goal. If the stack-top
element is not the goal, then it is expanded and f is measured for each of its
children. They are now sorted according to their ascending order of the
functional values and then pushed into the stack. If the stack-top element is
the goal, the algorithm exits; otherwise the process is continued until the
stack becomes empty. Pushing the sorted nodes into the stack adds a depth
first flavor to the present algorithm. The hill climbing algorithm is formally
presented below.
Procedure Hill-Climbing
Begin
o 1. Identify possible starting states and measure the distance (f) of their
closeness with the goal node; Push them in a stack according to the
ascending order of their f ;
o 2. Repeat
Pop stack to get the stack-top element;
If the stack-top element is the goal, announce it and exit
Else push its children into the stack in the ascending order of their
f values;
o Until the stack is empty;
End.
The hill climbing algorithm too is not free from shortcomings. One
common problem is trapping at local maxima at a foothill. When trapped at
local maxima, the measure of f at all possible next legal states yield less
promising values than the current state. A second drawback of the hill
climbing is reaching a plateau. Once a state on a plateau is reached, all legal next states will
also lie on this surface, making the search ineffective. A
new algorithm, called simulated annealing, discussed below could easily
solve the first two problems. Besides the above, another problem that too
gives us trouble is the traversal along the ridge. A ridge (vide figure above) on
many occasions leads to a local maxima. However, moving along the ridge is
not possible by a single step due to non-availability of appropriate operators.
A multiple step of movement is required to solve this problem.
Simulated Annealing
Begin
o 1. Identify possible starting states and measure the distance (f) of their
closeness with the goal; Push them in a stack according to the
ascending order of their f ;
o 2. Repeat
Pop stack to get stack-top element;
If the stack-top element is the goal,
Else do
Begin
a) generate children of the stack-top element N and
compute f for each of them;
b) If measure of f for at least one child of N is improving
Then push those children into stack in ascending order of
their f;
c) If none of the children of N is better in f
Then do
Begin
a) select any one of them randomly, compute its p’ and test
whether p’ exceeds a randomly generated number in the
interval
[0,1]; If yes, select that state as the next state; If no,
generate
another alternative legal next state and test in this way until
one
move can be selected; Replace stack-top element by the
selected
move (state);
b) Reduce T slightly; If the reduced value is negative, set it to
zero;
End;
End.
o Until the stack is empty;
End.
Another important point that we did not include in the algorithm is the
process of computation of ΔE. It is computed by taking the difference of the
value of f of the next state and that of the current (stack-top) state.
The third point to note is that T should be decreased once a new state with
less promising value is selected. T is always kept non-negative. When T
becomes zero, p’ will be zero and thus the probability of transition to any
other state will be zero.
Heuristic Search
This section is devoted to solve the search problem by a new technique, called
heuristic search. The term “heuristics” stands for ” thumb rules”, i.e., rules
which work successfully in many cases but its success is not guaranteed.
i)forward reasoning
ii)backward reasoning.
We have already
discussed that in a forward reasoning problem we move towards the goal state
from a pre-defined starting state, while in a backward reasoning problem, we
move towards the starting state from the given goal. The former class of
search algorithms, when realized with heuristic functions, is generally called
heuristic Search for OR-graphs or the Best First search Algorithms. It may be
noted that the best first search is a class of algorithms, and depending on the
variation of the performance measuring function it is differently named. One
typical member of this class is the algorithm A*. On the other hand, the
heuristic backward reasoning algorithms are generally called AND-OR graph
search algorithms and one ideal member of this class of algorithms is the
AO* algorithm. We will start this section with the best first search algorithm.
Procedure Best-First-Search
Begin
o 1. Identify possible starting states and measure the distance (f) of their
closeness with the goal; Put them in a list L;
o 2. While L is not empty do
Begin
a) Identify the node n from L that has the minimum f; If there
exist more than one node with minimum f, select any one of them
(say, n) arbitrarily;
b) If n is the goal
Then return n along with the path from the starting node,
and exit;
Else remove n from L and add all the children of n to the list L,
with their labeled paths from the starting node;
End.
o End While;
End.
Definition: A node is called open if the node has been generated and
the h’ (x) has been applied over it but it has not been expanded yet.
The predicted cost for h(x) is generally denoted by h’(x). Consequently, the
predicted total cost is denoted by f’(x), where
f’(x)=g(x)+h’(x).
Procedure A*
Begin
o 1. Put a new node n to the set of open nodes (hereafter open); Measure its
f’(n) = g(n) + h’ (n); Presume the set of closed nodes to be a null set
initially;
o 2. While open is not empty do
Begin
If n is the goal, stop and return n and the path of n from the
beginning node to n through back pointers;
Else do
Begin
a) remove n from open and put it under closed;
b) generate the children of n;
c) If all of them are new (i.e., do not exist in the graph
before generating them Then add them to open and
label their f’ and the path from the root node through
back pointers;
d) If one or more children of n already existed as open
nodes in the graph before their generation Then those
children must have multiple parents; Under this
circumstance compute their f’ through current path and
compare it through their old paths, and keep them
connected only through the shortest path from the
starting node and label the back pointer from the
children of n to their parent, if such pointers do not
exist;
e) If one or more children of n already existed as closed
nodes before generation of them, then they too must have
multiple parents; Under this circumstance, find the
shortest path from the starting node, i.e., the path (may be
current or old) through which f’ of n is minimum; If the
current path is selected, then the nodes in the sub-tree
rooted
at the corresponding child of n should have revised f’ as the
g’ for many of the nodes in that sub-tree changed; Label the
back pointer from the children of n to their parent, if such
pointers do not exist;
End.
End.
o End While;
End.
OR ii) X = 4 AND Y = 3
= 8, when i) X = 0 AND Y = 3
OR ii) X =4 AND Y = 0
Assume that g(x) at the root node = 0 and g(x) at a node x with
starting from x till the root node, is estimated to be g(x) = n. Now let us
illustrate the strategy of the best first search in an informal manner using the