ARBA MINCH UNIVERSITY

ARBA MINCH INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Faculty of Computing and Software Engineering

Department of Computer Science

GROUP ASSIGNMENT 1

Course Name: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

Submitted By

No. Student Name ID

1. Nageso Haile NSR/1896/12

2. Yordanos Bekele NSR/2583/12
3. Ousman Tuni NSR/2665/12
4. Thomas Sefiw NSR/2361/12
5. Abel Malu NSR/078/12

January 02, 2023

Informed Search Algorithms
Informed search algorithms use domain knowledge. In an informed search, problem
information is available which can guide the search. Informed search strategies can find a
solution more efficiently than an uninformed search strategy. Informed search is also called a
Heuristic search.

Informed search algorithm contains an array of knowledge such as how far we are from the
goal, path cost, how to reach to goal node, etc. This knowledge helps agents to explore less to
the search space and find more efficiently the goal node.

Here, the algorithms have information on the goal state, which helps in more efficient
searching. This information is obtained by something called a heuristic. 

A heuristic is a way which might not always be guaranteed for best solutions but guaranteed
to find a good solution in reasonable time.

In an informed search, a heuristic is a function that estimates how close a state is to the

goal state.  It finds the most promising path. It takes the current state of the agent as its input
and produces the estimation of how close agent is from the goal. The heuristic method,
however, might not always give the best solution, but it guaranteed to find a good solution in
reasonable time. It is represented by h(n), and it calculates the cost of an optimal path
between the pair of states. The value of the heuristic function is always positive.

h(n) <= h*(n) 

Here h(n) is heuristic cost, and h*(n) is the estimated cost. Hence heuristic cost should
be less than or equal to the estimated cost.

Pure Heuristic Search:

Pure heuristic search is the simplest form of heuristic search algorithms. It expands nodes
based on their heuristic value h(n). It maintains two lists, OPEN and CLOSED list. In the
CLOSED list, it places those nodes which have already expanded and in the OPEN list, it
places nodes which have yet not been expanded.

On each iteration, each node n with the lowest heuristic value is expanded and generates all
its successors and n is placed to the closed list. The algorithm continues until a goal state is
found.

In the informed search we will discuss two main algorithms which are given below:

 Best First Search Algorithm(Greedy search)

 A* Search Algorithm

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 1. Best-first Search Algorithm (Greedy Search):
Greedy best-first search algorithm always selects the path which appears best at that
moment. It is the combination of depth-first search and breadth-first search algorithms. It
uses the heuristic function and search. Best-first search allows us to take the advantages of
both algorithms. With the help of best-first search, at each step, we can choose the most
promising node. In the best first search algorithm, we expand the node which is closest to the
goal node and the closest cost is estimated by heuristic function.
h(n)= estimated cost from node n to the goal.

Best first search algorithm:

 Step 1: Place the starting node into the OPEN list.
 Step 2: If the OPEN list is empty, Stop and return failure.
 Step 3: Remove the node n, from the OPEN list which has the lowest value of h(n),
and places it in the CLOSED list.
 Step 4: Expand the node n, and generate the successors of node n.
 Step 5: Check each successor of node n, and find whether any node is a goal node or
not. If any successor node is goal node, then return success and terminate the search,
else proceed to Step 6.
 Step 6: For each successor node, algorithm checks for evaluation function f(n), and
then check if the node has been in either OPEN or CLOSED list. If the node has not
been in both list, then add it to the OPEN list.
 Step 7: Return to Step 2.

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Example:
Consider the below search problem, and we will traverse it using greedy best-first search. At
each iteration, each node is expanded using evaluation function f(n)=h(n) , which is given in
the below table.

In this search example, we are using two lists which are OPEN and CLOSED Lists.

Following are the iteration for traversing the above example.

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Expand the nodes of S and put in the CLOSED list

Initialization: Open [A, B], Closed [S]

Iteration 1: Open [A], Closed [S, B]

Iteration 2 : Open[E,F,A] , Closed[S,B] : Open[E,A], Closed[S,B,F]

Iteration 3: Open [I, G, E, A], Closed [S, B, F]

: Open [I, E, A], Closed [S, B, F, G]

Hence the final solution path will be: S----> B----->F----> G

Advantages:
 Simple and Easy to Implement: Greedy Best-First Search is a relatively
straightforward algorithm, making it easy to implement.
 Fast and Efficient: Greedy Best-First Search is a very fast algorithm, making it
ideal for applications where speed is essential.
 Low Memory Requirements: Greedy Best-First Search requires only a small
amount of memory, making it suitable for applications with limited memory.
 Flexible: Greedy Best-First Search can be adapted to different types of problems
and can be easily extended to more complex problems.

Disadvantages:
 Inaccurate Results: Greedy Best-First Search is not always guaranteed to find the
optimal solution, as it is only concerned with finding the most promising path.
 Heuristic Function: Greedy Best-First Search requires a heuristic function in order
to work, which adds complexity to the algorithm.

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 2. A* Search Algorithm:

A* search is the most commonly known form of best-first search. It uses heuristic function
h(n), and cost to reach the node n from the start state g(n). It has combined features of UCS
and greedy best-first search, by which it solves the problem efficiently. A* search algorithm
finds the shortest path through the search space using the heuristic function. This search
algorithm expands less search tree and provides optimal result faster. A* algorithm is similar
to UCS except that it uses g(n)+h(n) instead of g(n).
In A* search algorithm, we use search heuristic as well as the cost to reach the node. Hence
we can combine both costs as following, and this sum is called as a fitness number.
At each point in the search space, only those node is expanded which have the lowest value
of f(n), and the algorithm terminates when the goal node is found.

Algorithm of A* search:
 Step1: Place the starting node in the OPEN list.
 Step 2: Check if the OPEN list is empty or not, if the list is empty then return failure
and stops.
 Step 3: Select the node from the OPEN list which has the smallest value of evaluation
function (g+h), if node n is goal node then return success and stop, otherwise
 Step 4: Expand node n and generate all of its successors, and put n into the closed list.
For each successor n', check whether n' is already in the OPEN or CLOSED list, if not
then compute evaluation function for n' and place into Open list.
 Step 5: Else if node n' is already in OPEN and CLOSED, then it should be attached to
the back pointer which reflects the lowest g(n') value.
 Step 6: Return to Step 2.

Advantages:
 A* search algorithm is the best algorithm than other search algorithms.
 A* search algorithm is optimal and complete.
 This algorithm can solve very complex problems.

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Disadvantages:
 It does not always produce the shortest path as it mostly based on heuristics and
approximation.
 A* search algorithm has some complexity issues.
 The main drawback of A* is memory requirement as it keeps all generated nodes in
the memory, so it is not practical for various large-scale problems.

Example:
In this example, we will traverse the given graph using the A* algorithm. The heuristic value
of all states is given in the below table so we will calculate the f(n) of each state using the
formula f(n)= g(n) + h(n), where g(n) is the cost to reach any node from start state.

Here we will use OPEN and CLOSED list.

Solution:

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Initialization: {(S, 5)}

Iteration1: {(S--> A, 4), (S-->G, 10)}

Iteration2: {(S--> A-->C, 4), (S--> A-->B, 7), (S-->G, 10)}

Iteration3: {(S--> A-->C--->G, 6), (S--> A-->C--->D, 11), (S--> A-->B, 7), (S-->G, 10)}

Iteration 4 will give the final result, as S--->A--->C--->G it provides the optimal path with
cost 6.