Unit-II

Algorithms in Artificial Intelligence

Search algorithms are one of the most important areas of Artificial

Intelligence. The reflex agent of AI directly maps states into action. Whenever
these agents fail to operate in an environment where the state of mapping is
too large and not easily performed by the agent, then the stated problem
dissolves and sent to a problem-solving domain which breaks the large stored
problem into the smaller storage area and resolves one by one. The final
integrated action will be the desired outcomes.

Problem-solving agents:
In Artificial Intelligence, Search techniques are universal problem-solving
methods. Rational agents or Problem-solving agents in AI mostly used
these search strategies or algorithms to solve a specific problem and provide
the best result. Problem-solving agents are the goal-based agents and use
atomic representation.

There are basically three types of problem in artificial intelligence:

1. Ignorable: In which solution steps can be ignored.
2. Recoverable: In which solution steps can be undone.
3. Irrecoverable: Solution steps cannot be undo.

Steps problem-solving in AI: The problem of AI is directly associated with the

nature of humans and their activities. So we need a number of finite steps to
solve a problem which makes human easy works.
These are the following steps which require to solve a problem :
 Problem definition: Detailed specification of inputs and acceptable system
solutions.
 Problem analysis: Analyse the problem thoroughly.
 Knowledge Representation: collect detailed information about the problem
and define all possible techniques.
 Problem-solving: Selection of best techniques.

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Search Algorithm Terminologies:

o Search: Searching is a step by step procedure to solve a search-problem

in a given search space. A search problem can have three main factors:
a. Search Space: Search space represents a set of possible solutions,
which a system may have.
b. Start State: It is a state from where agent begins the search.
c. Goal test: It is a function which observe the current state and
returns whether the goal state is achieved or not.
Search tree: A tree representation of search problem is called Search tree. The
root of the search tree is the root node which is corresponding to the initial
state.
Actions: It gives the description of all the available actions to the agent.
Transition model: A description of what each action do, can be represented
as a transition model.
Path Cost: It is a function which assigns a numeric cost to each path.
Solution: It is an action sequence which leads from the start node to the goal
node.
Optimal Solution: If a solution has the lowest cost among all solutions.

Properties of Search Algorithms:

Following are the four essential properties of search algorithms to compare

the efficiency of these algorithms:

Completeness: A search algorithm is said to be complete if it guarantees to

return a solution if at least any solution exists for any random input.

Optimality: If a solution found for an algorithm is guaranteed to be the best

solution (lowest path cost) among all other solutions, then such a solution for
is said to be an optimal solution.

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Time Complexity: Time complexity is a measure of time for an algorithm to
complete its task.

Space Complexity: It is the maximum storage space required at any point

during the search, as the complexity of the problem.

Types of search algorithms

Based on the search problems we can classify the search algorithms into
uninformed (Blind search) search and informed search (Heuristic search)
algorithms.

Uninformed/Blind Search:
The uninformed search does not contain any domain knowledge such as
closeness, the location of the goal. It operates in a brute-force way as it only
includes information about how to traverse the tree and how to identify leaf
and goal nodes. Uninformed search applies a way in which search tree is
searched without any information about the search space like initial state
operators and test for the goal, so it is also called blind search.It examines
each node of the tree until it achieves the goal node.

It can be divided into five main types:

o Breadth-first search
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 o Uniform cost search
o Depth-first search
o Iterative deepening depth-first search
o Bidirectional Search

Informed Search
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.

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

Informed search can solve much complex problem which could not be solved
in another way.

An example of informed search algorithms is a traveling salesman problem.

1. Greedy Search
2. A* Search

1. Breadth-first Search:
o Breadth-first search is the most common search strategy for traversing a
tree or graph. This algorithm searches breadthwise in a tree or graph, so
it is called breadth-first search.
o BFS algorithm starts searching from the root node of the tree and
expands all successor node at the current level before moving to nodes
of next level.
o The breadth-first search algorithm is an example of a general-graph
search algorithm.

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 o Breadth-first search implemented using FIFO queue data structure.

Advantages:

o BFS will provide a solution if any solution exists.

o If there are more than one solutions for a given problem, then BFS will
provide the minimal solution which requires the least number of steps.

Disadvantages:

o It requires lots of memory since each level of the tree must be saved
into memory to expand the next level.
o BFS needs lots of time if the solution is far away from the root node.

Example:
In the below tree structure, we have shown the traversing of the tree using BFS
algorithm from the root node S to goal node K. BFS search algorithm traverse
in layers, so it will follow the path which is shown by the dotted arrow, and the
traversed path will be:

S---> A--->B---->C--->D---->G--->H--->E---->F---->I---->K

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Time Complexity: Time Complexity of BFS algorithm can be obtained by the
number of nodes traversed in BFS until the shallowest Node.

Where the d= depth of shallowest solution and b is a node at every state.

T (b) = 1+b2+b3+.......+ bd= O (bd)

Space Complexity: Space complexity of BFS algorithm is given by the Memory

size of frontier which is O(bd).

Completeness: BFS is complete, which means if the shallowest goal node is at

some finite depth, then BFS will find a solution.

Optimality: BFS is optimal if path cost is a non-decreasing function of the

depth of the node.

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2.Depth-first Search
o Depth-first search isa recursive algorithm for traversing a tree or graph
data structure.
o It is called the depth-first search because it starts from the root node
and follows each path to its greatest depth node before moving to the
next path.
o DFS uses a stack data structure for its implementation.
o The process of the DFS algorithm is similar to the BFS algorithm.

Note: Backtracking is an algorithm technique for finding all possible solutions using
recursion.

Advantage:

o DFS requires very less memory as it only needs to store a stack of the
nodes on the path from root node to the current node.
o It takes less time to reach to the goal node than BFS algorithm (if it
traverses in the right path).

Disadvantage:

o There is the possibility that many states keep re-occurring, and there is
no guarantee of finding the solution.
o DFS algorithm goes for deep down searching and sometime it may go
to the infinite loop.

Example:
In the below search tree, we have shown the flow of depth-first search, and it
will follow the order as:

Root node--->Left node ----> right node.

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It will start searching from root node S, and traverse A, then B, then D and E,
after traversing E, it will backtrack the tree as E has no other successor and still
goal node is not found. After backtracking it will traverse node C and then G,
and here it will terminate as it found goal node.

Completeness: DFS search algorithm is complete within finite state space as it

will expand every node within a limited search tree.

Time Complexity: Time complexity of DFS will be equivalent to the node

traversed by the algorithm. It is given by:

T(n)= 1+ n2+ n3 +.........+ nm=O(nm)

Where, m= maximum depth of any node and this can be much larger than d
(Shallowest solution depth)

Space Complexity: DFS algorithm needs to store only single path from the root
node, hence space complexity of DFS is equivalent to the size of the fringe set,
which is O(bm).

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Optimal: DFS search algorithm is non-optimal, as it may generate a large
number of steps or high cost to reach to the goal node.

3.Depth-Limited Search Algorithm:

A depth-limited search algorithm is similar to depth-first search with a
predetermined limit. Depth-limited search can solve the drawback of the
infinite path in the Depth-first search. In this algorithm, the node at the depth
limit will treat as it has no successor nodes further.

Depth-limited search can be terminated with two Conditions of failure:

o Standard failure value: It indicates that problem does not have any
solution.
o Cutoff failure value: It defines no solution for the problem within a given
depth limit.

Advantages:

Depth-limited search is Memory efficient.

Disadvantages:

o Depth-limited search also has a disadvantage of incompleteness.

o It may not be optimal if the problem has more than one solution.

Example:

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Completeness: DLS search algorithm is complete if the solution is above the
depth-limit.

Time Complexity: Time complexity of DLS algorithm is O(bℓ).

Space Complexity: Space complexity of DLS algorithm is O(b×ℓ).

Optimal: Depth-limited search can be viewed as a special case of DFS, and it

is also not optimal even if ℓ>d.

4.Uniform-cost Search Algorithm:

Uniform-cost search is a searching algorithm used for traversing a weighted
tree or graph. This algorithm comes into play when a different cost is available
for each edge. The primary goal of the uniform-cost search is to find a path to
the goal node which has the lowest cumulative cost. Uniform-cost search
expands nodes according to their path costs form the root node. It can be
used to solve any graph/tree where the optimal cost is in demand. A uniform-
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cost search algorithm is implemented by the priority queue. It gives maximum
priority to the lowest cumulative cost. Uniform cost search is equivalent to BFS
algorithm if the path cost of all edges is the same.

Advantages:

o Uniform cost search is optimal because at every state the path with the
least cost is chosen.

Disadvantages:

o It does not care about the number of steps involve in searching and only
concerned about path cost. Due to which this algorithm may be stuck in
an infinite loop.

Example:

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Completeness:

Uniform-cost search is complete, such as if there is a solution, UCS will find it.

Time Complexity:

Let C* is Cost of the optimal solution, and ε is each step to get closer to the goal
node. Then the number of steps is = C*/ε+1. Here we have taken +1, as we
start from state 0 and end to C*/ε.

Hence, the worst-case time complexity of Uniform-cost search isO(b1 + [C*/ε])/.

Space Complexity:

The same logic is for space complexity so, the worst-case space complexity of
Uniform-cost search is O(b1 + [C*/ε]).

Optimal:

Uniform-cost search is always optimal as it only selects a path with the lowest
path cost.

5.Iterative deepening depth-first Search:

The iterative deepening algorithm is a combination of DFS and BFS
algorithms. This search algorithm finds out the best depth limit and does it by
gradually increasing the limit until a goal is found.

This algorithm performs depth-first search up to a certain "depth limit", and it

keeps increasing the depth limit after each iteration until the goal node is
found.

This Search algorithm combines the benefits of Breadth-first search's fast

search and depth-first search's memory efficiency.

The iterative search algorithm is useful uninformed search when search space
is large, and depth of goal node is unknown.

Advantages:

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 o Itcombines the benefits of BFS and DFS search algorithm in terms of fast
search and memory efficiency.

Disadvantages:

o The main drawback of IDDFS is that it repeats all the work of the
previous phase.

Example:
Following tree structure is showing the iterative deepening depth-first search.
IDDFS algorithm performs various iterations until it does not find the goal
node. The iteration performed by the algorithm is given as:

1'st Iteration-----> A
2'nd Iteration----> A, B, C
3'rd Iteration------>A, B, D, E, C, F, G
4'th Iteration------>A, B, D, H, I, E, C, F, K, G
In the fourth iteration, the algorithm will find the goal node.

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Completeness:

This algorithm is complete is ifthe branching factor is finite.

Time Complexity:

Let's suppose b is the branching factor and depth is d then the worst-case
time complexity is O(bd).

Space Complexity:

The space complexity of IDDFS will be O(bd).

Optimal:

IDDFS algorithm is optimal if path cost is a non- decreasing function of the

depth of the node.

6. Bidirectional Search Algorithm:

Bidirectional search algorithm runs two simultaneous searches, one form initial state
called as forward-search and other from goal node called as backward-search, to find the
goal node. Bidirectional search replaces one single search graph with two small subgraphs
in which one starts the search from an initial vertex and other starts from goal vertex. The
search stops when these two graphs intersect each other.

Bidirectional search can use search techniques such as BFS, DFS, DLS, etc.

Advantages:

o Bidirectional search is fast.

o Bidirectional search requires less memory

Disadvantages:

o Implementation of the bidirectional search tree is difficult.

o In bidirectional search, one should know the goal state in advance.

Example:

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In the below search tree, bidirectional search algorithm is applied. This algorithm divides one
graph/tree into two sub-graphs. It starts traversing from node 1 in the forward direction and
starts from goal node 16 in the backward direction.

The algorithm terminates at node 9 where two searches meet.

Completeness: Bidirectional Search is complete if we use BFS in both searches.

Time Complexity: Time complexity of bidirectional search using BFS is O(bd).

Space Complexity: Space complexity of bidirectional search is O(bd).

Optimal: Bidirectional search is Optimal.

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