This chapter discusses problem solving through searching. It outlines different types of searching agents and techniques, including blind search strategies like breadth-first search and informed/heuristic search strategies like A* search. It also discusses formulating the problem, goal, and actions. Toy problems are presented to illustrate searching, including the vacuum cleaner world, 8-puzzle, and 8 queens problem. Real world problems that can be modeled as searches are also mentioned.
This chapter discusses problem solving through searching. It outlines different types of searching agents and techniques, including blind search strategies like breadth-first search and informed/heuristic search strategies like A* search. It also discusses formulating the problem, goal, and actions. Toy problems are presented to illustrate searching, including the vacuum cleaner world, 8-puzzle, and 8 queens problem. Real world problems that can be modeled as searches are also mentioned.
This chapter discusses problem solving through searching. It outlines different types of searching agents and techniques, including blind search strategies like breadth-first search and informed/heuristic search strategies like A* search. It also discusses formulating the problem, goal, and actions. Toy problems are presented to illustrate searching, including the vacuum cleaner world, 8-puzzle, and 8 queens problem. Real world problems that can be modeled as searches are also mentioned.
This chapter discusses problem solving through searching. It outlines different types of searching agents and techniques, including blind search strategies like breadth-first search and informed/heuristic search strategies like A* search. It also discusses formulating the problem, goal, and actions. Toy problems are presented to illustrate searching, including the vacuum cleaner world, 8-puzzle, and 8 queens problem. Real world problems that can be modeled as searches are also mentioned.
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Chapter 3
Problem solving by searching
Chapter outline Types of agents that solve problem by searching Problem and goal formulation Techniques of search strategies Blind search strategies Heuristic search strategies Searching in agents Searching is a method in which we see how an agent can find a sequence of actions that achieves its goals when no single action will do. Simple Reflex agents don’t have ability to search for solutions to problems because they don’t have a goal. Goals help organize behavior by limiting the objectives that the agent is trying to achieve and hence the actions it needs to consider. Goal formulation, based on the current situation and the agent’s performance measure, is the first step in problem solving. Searching agents a goal is a set of world states – exactly those states in which the goal is satisfied. The agent’s task is to find out how to act, now and in the future, so that it reaches a goal state. Problem formulation is the process of deciding what actions and states to consider, to achieve a given goal. Problem, goal and action Problem: defined formally by five components States that the agent may be at any time initial state that the agent starts in s. e.g: in(location1) description of the possible actions to the agent applicable to s. e.g. {go(location2),go(location3)} transition model, description of what each action does. E.g RESULT(in(location1), go(location2)) = in(location2). the initial state, actions, and transition model implicitly define the state space goal test, determines whether a given state is a goal state. E.g in(location3) path cost function assigns non-negative numeric cost to each path. step cost of taking action a in state s to reach state s′ is denoted by c(s, a, s′) Toy problem: vacuum cleaner States: The state is determined by both the agent location and the dirt locations. 2 × 22 = 8 possible world states. Initial state: Any state can be designated as the initial state. Actions: In this simple environment, each state has just three actions: Left, Right, and Suck. Transition model: The actions have their expected effects or no effect. Goal test: This checks whether all the squares are clean. Path cost: Let’s say each step costs 1, so the path cost is the number of steps in the path. State space
State space of vacuum cleaner toy problem having discrete locations,
discrete dirt, reliable cleaning, and it never gets any dirtier Toy problems: 8-puzzle States: any description of the location of each number and the blank = 9!/2 Initial state: Any state can be designated as the initial state. Actions: movements of the blank space Left, Right, Up, or Down. Transition model: Given a state and action, returns the resulting state; Goal test: checks whether the state matches the goal Path cost: if a step costs 1, the path cost is the number of steps in the path. Toy problems: 8 queen problem Problem: to place eight queens on a chessboard such that no queen attacks any other States: Any arrangement of 0 to 8 queens on the board is a state. Initial state: No queens on the board. Actions: Add a queen to any empty square. Transition model: Returns the board with a queen added to the specified square. Goal test: 8 queens are on the board, none attacked. Real world problems ROUTE-FINDING PROBLEM TOURING PROBLEM TRAVELING SALESMAN PROBLEM VLSI LAYOUT ROBOT NAVIGATION AUTOMATIC ASSEMBLY SEQUENCING Search for solutions SEARCH TREE – tree formed as a result of search EXPANDING – applying legal action to a state PARENT NODE – node with branching node(s) CHILD NODE – node with father/ancestor node LEAF NODE – node with no child node FRONTIER - set of all leaf nodes available for expansion Search for solution Search algorithms require a data structure to keep track of the search tree that is being constructed. For each node n of the tree, we have a structure that contains four components: n(STATE): the state in the state space to which the node corresponds; n(PARENT): the node in the search tree that generated this node; n(ACTION): the action that was applied to the parent to generate the node; n(PATH-COST): the cost, traditionally denoted by g(n), of the path from the initial state to the node, as indicated by the parent pointers Queue: to store Frontier inf Three actions: isEmpty(Queue) POP(Queue) PUSH(node, Queue) Three variants: FIFO (Q) LIFO (Stack) Priority Solution performance measure Completeness: Is the algorithm guaranteed to find a solution when there is one? Optimality: Does the strategy find the optimal solution? Time complexity: How long does it take to find a solution? Space complexity: How much memory is needed to perform the search? Search strategies Uninformed search (Blind search) Strategies that have no additional information about states beyond that provided in the problem definition.
Informed search(Heuristic search)
Strategies that know whether one non-goal state is “more promising” than another are called informed search or heuristic search strategies; Uninformed search Breadth-first search Uniform-cost search Depth-first search Depth-limited search Iterative deepening depth-first search Bidirectional search Complexity INFORMED (HEURISTIC) SEARCH STRATEGIES Greedy best-first search A* Search Memory-bounded heuristic search IDA*(Iterative Deepening A*) RBFS(Recursive Best-First Search)