CS 188: Artificial Intelligence

Spring 2011

Lecture 2: Queue-Based Search

1/24/2010

Pieter Abbeel – UC Berkeley

Many slides from Dan Klein

Announcements

Project 0: Python Tutorial

Due Friday 5pm.

Lab session Wednesday 3-5pm in 271 Soda

The lab time is optional, but P0 itself is not

On submit, you should get email from the autograder

Project 1: Search

Out today, due next week Friday 5pm.

Start early and ask questions. It’s longer than most!

Sections starting this week Thursday and Friday

See course webpage for details

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 Today

Reflex Agents

Agents that Plan Ahead

 Formalization: Search Problems

Uninformed Search Methods (part review for some)

Depth-First Search

Breadth-First Search

Uniform-Cost Search

Heuristic Search Methods (new for all)

Greedy Search

Reminder

Only a very small fraction of AI is about making
computers play games intelligently

Recall: computer vision, natural language,
robotics, machine learning, computational
biology, etc.

That being said: games tend to provide relatively

simple example settings which are great to
illustrate concepts and learn about algorithms
which underlie many areas of AI

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 Reflex Agent

Choose action based on
current percept (and
maybe memory)

May have memory or a
model of the world’s
current state

Do not consider the future
consequences of their
actions

Act on how the world IS

Can a reflex agent be

rational?

A reflex agent for pacman

4 actions: move North, East,

South or West

Reflex agent

While(food left)

Sort the possible directions to move according
to the amount of food in each direction

Go in the direction with the largest amount of
food

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 A reflex agent for pacman (2)

Reflex agent

While(food left)

Sort the possible directions to move according
to the amount of food in each direction

Go in the direction with the largest amount of
food

A reflex agent for pacman (3)

Reflex agent

While(food left)

Sort the possible directions to move according to the
amount of food in each direction

Go in the direction with the largest amount of food

But, if other options are available, exclude the direction we
just came from

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 A reflex agent for pacman (4)

Reflex agent

While(food left)

If can keep going in the current direction, do so

Otherwise:

Sort directions according to the amount of food

Go in the direction with the largest amount of food

But, if other options are available, exclude the direction we just
came from

A reflex agent for pacman (5)

Reflex agent

While(food left)

If can keep going in the current direction, do so

Otherwise:

Sort directions according to the amount of food

Go in the direction with the largest amount of food

But, if other options are available, exclude the direction we just
came from

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 Reflex Agent Goal-based Agents

Choose action based on
Plan ahead
current percept (and
Ask “what if”
maybe memory)
Decisions based on

May have memory or a (hypothesized)
model of the world’s consequences of
current state actions

Do not consider the future
Must have a model of
consequences of their how the world evolves
actions in response to actions

Act on how the world IS
Act on how the world

WOULD BE

Can a reflex agent be
rational?

Search Problems

A search problem consists of:

A state space

“N”, 1.0

A successor function

“E”, 1.0

A start state and a goal test

A solution is a sequence of actions (a plan)

which transforms the start state to a goal state

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 Example: Romania

State space:

Cities

Successor
function:

Go to adj city
with cost = dist

Start state:

Arad

Goal test:

Is state ==
Bucharest?

Solution?

State Space Graphs

State space graph: A
mathematical a G
representation of a b c
search problem
e

For every search problem, d f
there’s a corresponding
S h
state space graph

The successor function is p r
represented by arcs q

Ridiculously tiny search graph

We can rarely build this
for a tiny search problem
graph in memory (so
we don’t)

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 State Space Sizes?

Search Problem:
Eat all of the food

Pacman positions:
10 x 12 = 120

Food count: 30

Ghost positions: 12

Pacman facing:
up, down, left, right

Search Trees

“N”, 1.0 “E”, 1.0

A search tree:

This is a “what if” tree of plans and outcomes

Start state at the root node

Children correspond to successors

Nodes contain states, correspond to PLANS to those states

For most problems, we can never actually build the whole tree

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 Another Search Tree

Search:

Expand out possible plans

Maintain a fringe of unexpanded plans

Try to expand as few tree nodes as possible

General Tree Search

Important ideas:

Fringe Detailed pseudocode

Expansion is in the book!

Exploration strategy

Main question: which fringe nodes to explore?

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 Example: Tree Search
a G
b c

e
d f
S h
p r
q

State Graphs vs. Search Trees

a G Each NODE in in the
b c search tree is an
e entire PATH in the
d f problem graph.
S h
p r
q
S

d e p

We construct both b c e h r q
on demand – and
we construct as a a h r p q f
little as possible.
p q f q c G

q c a
G
a

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 Review: Depth First Search
a G
Strategy: expand b c
deepest node first
e
d f
Implementation:
Fringe is a LIFO S h

stack p r
q

d e p

b c e h r q

a a h r p q f

p q f q c G

q c G a

Review: Breadth First Search

a G
Strategy: expand
b c
shallowest node first
e
Implementation: d f
Fringe is a FIFO S h
queue p q r

d e p
Search
b c e h r q
Tiers
a a h r p q f

p q f q c G

q c G a

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 Search Algorithm Properties

Complete? Guaranteed to find a solution if one exists?

Optimal? Guaranteed to find the least cost path?

Time complexity?

Space complexity?
Variables:
n Number of states in the problem
b The average branching factor B
(the average number of successors)
C* Cost of least cost solution
s Depth of the shallowest solution
m Max depth of the search tree

DFS
Algorithm Complete Optimal Time Space
DFS Depth First N N N LMAX)
Search N O(B
Infinite O(LMAX)
Infinite

START a

GOAL

Infinite paths make DFS incomplete…

How can we fix this?

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 DFS

With cycle checking, DFS is complete.*

1 node
b
… b nodes
b2 nodes
m tiers

bm nodes

Algorithm Complete Optimal Time Space

DFS w/ Path
Checking Y N O(bm) O(bm)

When is DFS optimal?

* Or graph search – next lecture.

BFS
Algorithm Complete Optimal Time Space
DFS w/ Path
Checking Y N O(bm) O(bm)
BFS Y N* O(bs+1) O(bs+1)

1 node
b
… b nodes
s tiers
b2 nodes

bs nodes

bm nodes

When is BFS optimal?

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 Comparisons

When will BFS outperform DFS?

When will DFS outperform BFS?

Iterative Deepening
Iterative deepening uses DFS as a subroutine:
b
1. Do a DFS which only searches for paths of …
length 1 or less.
2. If “1” failed, do a DFS which only searches paths
of length 2 or less.
3. If “2” failed, do a DFS which only searches paths
of length 3 or less.
….and so on.

Algorithm Complete Optimal Time Space

DFS w/ Path
Checking Y N O(bm) O(bm)
BFS Y N* O(bs+1) O(bs+1)
ID Y N* O(bs+1) O(bs)

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 Costs on Actions
a GOAL
2 2
b c
3
2
1 8
2 e
3 d
f
9 8 2
START h
1 4 1

p 4 r
15
q

Notice that BFS finds the shortest path in terms of number of

transitions. It does not find the least-cost path.
We will quickly cover an algorithm which does find the least-cost path.

Uniform Cost Search

2 a G
b c
Expand cheapest node first: 1 8 2
2 e
3 d f
Fringe is a priority queue 9 1
S h 8
1
1 p
q
r
15
S 0

d 3 e 9 p 1

b 4 c e 5 h 17 r 11 q 16
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Cost a 6 a h 13 r 7 p q f
contours
p q f 8 q c G

q 11 c G 10 a

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 Priority Queue Refresher

A priority queue is a data structure in which you can insert

and retrieve (key, value) pairs with the following operations:

pq.push(key, value) inserts (key, value) into the queue.

pq.pop() returns the key with the lowest value, and
removes it from the queue.

You can decrease a key’s priority by pushing it again

Unlike a regular queue, insertions aren’t constant time,
usually O(log n)

We’ll need priority queues for cost-sensitive search methods

Uniform Cost Search

Algorithm Complete Optimal Time (in nodes) Space
DFS w/ Path
Checking Y N O(bm) O(bm)
BFS Y N O(bs+1) O(bs+1)
UCS Y* Y O(bC*/ε) O(bC*/ε)

b
…
* UCS can fail if
C*/ε tiers actions can get
arbitrarily cheap

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 Uniform Cost Issues

Remember: explores … c≤1
increasing cost contours c≤2
c≤3

The good: UCS is
complete and optimal!

The bad:

Explores options in every
“direction”

No information about goal
location Start Goal

Search Heuristics

Any estimate of how close a state is to a goal

Designed for a particular search problem

Examples: Manhattan distance, Euclidean distance

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5
11.2

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 Heuristics

Best First / Greedy Search

Expand the node that seems closest…

What can go wrong?

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 Best First / Greedy Search

A common case: b

Best-first takes you straight …
to the (wrong) goal

Worst-case: like a badly-

guided DFS in the worst
case

Can explore everything

Can get stuck in loops if no
cycle checking b
…

Like DFS in completeness

(finite states w/ cycle
checking)

Search Gone Wrong?

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Can we leverage the heuristic information
in a more sound way?

A* search

We will cover that on Wednesday!

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