STATE SPACE REPRESENTATION

Building Goal-Based Agents

• We have a goal to reach

– Driving from point A to point B
– Put 8 queens on a chess board such that no one
attacks another
– Prove that John is an ancestor of Mary
• We have information about where we are now at the
beginning.
• We have a set of actions we can take to move around
(change from where we are)
• Objective: find a sequence of legal actions which will
bring us from the start point to a goal
 What are the actions?

• Quantify all of the primitive actions or events that are

sufficient to describe all necessary changes in
solving a task/goal.
• No uncertainty associated with what an action does to
the world. That is, given an action (operator or move)
and a description of the current state of the world, the
action completely specifies
– Precondition: if that action CAN be applied to the
current world (i.e., is it applicable and legal), and
– Effect: what the exact state of the world will be
after the action is performed in the current world
(i.e., no need
for "history" information to be able to
compute what the new world looks like).
 Actions

• Note also that actions can all be considered as discrete

events
that can be thought of as occurring at an instant of time.
– That is, the world is in one situation, then an action
occurs and
the world is now in a new situation.
– For example, if "Mary is in class" and then performs the
action "go home," then in the next situation she is "at
home." There is no representation of a point in time
where she is neither in class nor at home (i.e., in the
state of "going home").
• The number of operators needed depends on the
representation
used in describing a state.
 Representing states

• At any moment, the relevant world is represented as a

state
– Initial (start) state: S
– An action (or an operation) changes the current
state to another state (if it is applied): state
transition
– An action can be taken (applicable) only if
the its precondition is met by the current
state
– For a given state, there might be more than one
applicable actions
– Goal state: a state satisfies the goal description or
passes
the goal test
– Dead-end state: a non-goal state to which no
 Representing states

• State space:
– Includes the initial state S and all other states that are
reachable from S by a sequence of actions
– A state space can be organized as a
graph: nodes: states in the space
arcs: actions/operations
• The size of a problem is usually described in terms of the
number of states (or the size of the state space) that are
possible.
– Tic-Tac-Toe has about 3^9 states.
– Checkers has about 10^40 states.
– Rubik's Cube has about 10^19 states.
– Chess has about 10^120 states in a typical game.
 Formalizing Search in a State Space
• A state space is a graph, (V, E) where V is a set of nodes and E is a
set of arcs, where each arc is directed from a node to another node
• node: corresponds to a state
–state description
• arc: corresponds to an applicable action/operation.
–the source and destination nodes are called as parent (immediate
predecessor) and child (immediate successor) nodes with respect to each
other
–each arc has a fixed, non-negative cost associated with it, corresponding
to the cost of the action
• node generation: making explicit a node by applying an action
to another node which has been made explicit
• nodeexpansion: generate all children of an explicit node
by applying all applicable operations to that node
• One or more nodes are designated as start nodes
• A goal test predicate is applied to a node to determine if its
associated
state is a goal state
• A solution is a sequence of operations that is associated with a path in
a state space from a start node to a goal node
• The cost of a solution is the sum of the arc costs on the solution path
 State Space
• In state space representation of problem start with the initial
state &
wandering through the set of states in search of final state.
• The state space representation forms the basis of most of AI
problems. It’s structure corresponds to structure of problem
solving in two importance ways.
• It allows for formal destination of a problem as the need to
convert some given situation into some desired situation using
a set of permissible operation.
• It permit us to a design the process of solving a particular
problem as a
combination
 For
Example:

It one wants to make a cup of coffee then what he will do?

State space representation of this problem can be done as follow:
First of all analyze the problem i.e. verify whether the necessary
ingredients like instant cases power milk power, sugar, kettle stove
etc are available or not.
If are available, then steps to solve the problems are.
Boil necessary water in the kettle.
Take some of the boiled water in a cup add necessary amount of
instant coffee pour to decoction.
Add milk pour to the remaining boiling water to make milk.
Milk decoction and milk.
Add sufficient quantity of sugar to your taste & coffee is ready.
SIMPLE EXAMPLE FOR THE STATE SPACE
 Define knowledge:
Formally speaking, a piece of knowledge is a function that maps a
domain of clauses onto a range of clauses.
The function may be algebraic or relational that depends upon the
area of applications.
For example consider the rule PR1, which maps mother child
relationship between the same pair.
i.e. PR1: Mother (m, c) → Loves (m, c)
Where in PR1 Mother (m, c) and loves (m, c) are two
predicates;
‘m’, ‘c’ are variables and ‘→’ is an if-then operator.
When m and c assume specific values for example m = Sita
and c = Lob then Mother (Sita, Lob) and loves (Sita, Lob) are
called clauses (i.e. simple sentence/simple provision in law.).
Production system:
Since search forms the core of many intelligent
processes, it is useful to structure AI programs in a
way that facilities describing of performing search
process. A production system provides such system
structure as follow:

1. Set of rules as the form

2. One or more KB/Database that contains whatever
information
is appropriate for particular task
3.Control strategy that specific the order in which the rules will
be compared to the database and a way of resolving the conflict
that arise when several rules matched at once.
4.Production system is the simplest and one of the oldest
techniques for knowledge representation.
 1. A set of production rules (PR):
Left side determines the applicability of the rule and a right side
describes the operation to be performed if the rule is applied.
2. One or more knowledge/database:
That contain whatever information is appropriate for the
particular task (is called the working memory)
3. A control structure/interpreter:
The control structure is strategy that specifies the order in which the
rules will be compared to the database and also a way of resolving the
conflicts that arise when several rules match at once.
• the first requirement of a good control strategy is that it cause motion.
• The second requirement of a good control strategy is that it cause systematic.
4. Rule applier:
A conflict may arise when more than one rule that can be fired in a
situation of rule interpreter is to decide which is to be served of what is
the order. The strategies used to resolve the conflict resolution
strategies.
Architecture of a production system:
•Perform the first system: To choose first rule that matches.
•Sequencing technique: To adopt the rule in the sequence they are.
•Matching rules: If there are two matching rules one is more specific
than the
other activate.
• More recent policy: It is generally believed that a newly
added rule is more knowledgeable than existing ones. Hence is
system is adopting this method it should for most recent rules.
It has wide application in automata theory, formal grammars and
the design of programming languages. However it has been entered
into knowledge engineering by Buchanan and Feigenvan.
Principles of a production system by example: Water Jug Problem
Problem: given two water jugs (4 liter & 3 liter); neither has any
measuring markers on it. there is a pump that can use to fill the
jugs with water. How can you get exactly 2 liter water in 4 liter jug?
Solution:
Let us assume that x & y represents the content of 4L and 3L jugs
respectively.
The content of the two jugs will be represented by (x, y). The set of
possible
PRs are listed below.
1. (x, y) if x < 4 → (4, y) = fill the 4 gallon jug.
2. (x, , y) if y < 3 → (x, 3) = fill the 3 gallon jug.
3. (x, y) if x > 0 → (x-d, y) = pour some water out of the 4 gallon
jug.
4. (x, y) if y > 0 → (x, y-d) = pour some water out of the 3 gallon
jug.
7. (x, y) if x + y → 4 & y > 0 = (4, y-(4-x)) = pour water
from 3L jug into 4L jug until the 4L jug is full.
8.(x, y) if x + y → 3 & x > 0 = (x-(3-y), 3) = pour water
from 4L jug
into 3L jug until the 3L jug is full.
9.(x, y) if x + y <= 4 & y > 0 → (x + y, 0) = pour all the
water from 3L jug to 4L jug.
10.(x, y) if x + y <= 3 & x > 0 → (0, x + y) = pour all the
water from 4L
jug to 3L jug.
11.(0, 2) = (2, 0) = pour the 2L from 3L jug to 4L
jug. 12.(2, y) = (0, y) = empty the 2L in the jug
on the ground.
One solution
4L 3L rule applied
0 0
2
0 3
9
3 0
2
3 3
7
4 2
5 or 12
0 2
9 or 11
2 0

To keep track of the reasoning process, we draw a state-space for the problem.
The leaves generated after firing of the rules should be stored in WM.
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