Introduction to

Artificial Intelligent (AI)

2. Problem solving by
Searching
 Define a problem

A problem can be defined by 5 components:

• Initial state
• Possible Actions: a set of actions that can be executed in
each state
• Transition (successor) function: returns the state that
results from doing an action, but does not tell which action to
use
• Goal test: check if the current state is goal state
• Cost: a cost function that reflects its own performance
measure
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 Define a problem
Problem: find path from Arad to Bucharest

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 Define a problem
Problem: 8 - Puzzle

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 Define a problem
Problem: 8 - Puzzle
How many states 8-puzzle has?
9!/2 = 181,440 states

Transition (successor) function returns

state/alternatives.
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 Define a problem
Problem: 15 - Puzzle

In 1878, Sam Loyd offered $1,000 to the first

Sam Loyd (1841-1911)
person who would solve the following problem America’s greatest
puzzle-expert
But no one ever won the prize!!
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 Define a problem
Problem: 15 - Puzzle

Search methods are

used to explore and
find the optimal
alternatives

15-puzzle has 16!/2 ~ 1.04 x 1013 states

→ too large to store and would take too
long to learn

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 Define a problem as a search
problem
Search problem’s components:
• Initial state
• State space S
• Successor function:
x ∈ S → SUCCESSORS(x) ∈ 2S
• Goal test: x ∈ S → GOAL?(x) =T or F
• Arc Cost

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 State Graph

• Each state is represent by a

node
• An arc connects a node s to
node s’ if s’ ∈ SUCCESSORS(s)
• A solution is a path
connecting the initial node to a
goal node
• The cost is the sum of the arc
costs along a path
• An optimal solution is a
solution path of minimum cost
• There might be no solution !
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 Problem formulation

A problem can be formulated in different ways.

Problem: path finding

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#1 #2 #3
Problem formulation

#1 #2 #3

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 State space

How big is the state space of the (n2 - 1)-puzzle?

• 8-puzzle → 9! = 362,880 states 0.036s
• 15-puzzle → 16! ~ 2.09 x 1013 states 55 hours
• 24-puzzle → 25! ~ 1025 states 109 years
If a computer can do
100 million state/sec

It is often not feasible (or too expensive) to build a complete

state graph

A problem solver must construct a solution by exploring a

small portion of the graph
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Searching the State Space

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Search Algorithms

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 a G
b c
Blind search e
d f
Breath First Search S h
Strategy: expand a shallowest p r
q
node first
S

d e p
Search
b c e h r q
Tiers
15

a a h r p q f

p q f q c G

q c a
G
a
 Blind search
Breath First Search
Strategy: expand a shallowest node first

Visited
S

Queue
1 2
First Last

First In First Out

(FIFO)
 Blind search
Breath First Search
Strategy: expand a shallowest node first

Visited
S 1

Queue
2 3
First Last

First In First Out

(FIFO)
 Blind search
Breath First Search
Strategy: expand a shallowest node first

Visited
S 1 2

Queue
3 4
First Last

First In First Out

(FIFO)
 Blind search
Breath First Search
Strategy: expand a shallowest node first

Visited
S 1 2

Queue
4 5
First Last

First In First Out

(FIFO)
 Blind search
Breath First Search
Strategy: expand a shallowest node first

Visited
S 1 2 3 4

Queue
5
First Last

First In First Out

(FIFO)
 Blind search
Breath First Search
Strategy: expand a shallowest node first

Visited
S 1 2 3 4 5

Queue

Shortest Path
S 2 3 5
 Blind search
Breath First Search
Strategy: expand a shallowest node first
 Blind search
Breath First Search
Strategy: expand a shallowest node first

Exercise: Rat in a Maze Problem

 a G
Blind search b c

Depth First Search e

d f
Strategy: expand a deepest S h
node first
p q r
S

d e p

b c e h r q

a a h r p q f

p q f q c G

q c a
G
a
 2 a G
b 8 c
Blind search 1
2 2
3 e
d 9 2 f
Uniform Cost Search S h 8
1
Strategy: expand a cheapest node first: 1 p r
q
15
S 0

d 3 e 9 p 1

b 4 c e 5 h 17 r 11 q 16
11
25
a 6 a h 13 r 7 p q f
Cost
contours q c
p q f 8 G

q c a
11 G 10
a
 Heuristic search

Heuristic function h(n) is a function used to estimates how close a

state is to the goal. h(n) is always positive
Heuristic search find node/path based on their heuristic value h(n).
Heuristic search uses 2 lists:
- OPEN: nodes which have yet been expanded
- CLOSED: nodes which have already expanded
On each iteration, node n with the lowest heuristic value is
expanded and generates all its successors, after that n is placed to the
closed list.
2 main heuristic search algorithms:
- Greedy search
- A* search
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 Heuristic search
Greedy Search : selects the path which appears best at that moment by
combination of DFS and BFS.

h(x) 27
 Heuristic search
Greedy Search

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 Heuristic search
Greedy Search

10

5
11.2

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 Heuristic search
A* Search : find the shortest path by combine heuristic cost and cost to
reach node n from start state

Uniform-cost Greedy search

search

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 Heuristic search
A* Search : find the shortest path by combine heuristic cost and cost to
reach node n from start state

http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/Heuristics.html 31
Heuristic search

Greedy

A*
Uniform Cost
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 Heuristic search
A* Search

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