Uninformed search
strategies
A search strategy is defined by
picking the order of node expansion
Uninformed search strategies use
only the information available in the
problem definition
Breadth-first search
Depth-first search
Iterative deepening search
Uniform-cost search
Breadth-first search
Expand shallowest unexpanded node
Implementation: frontier is a FIFO queue
Example state
space graph for a
tiny search
problem
Example from P. Abbeel and D. Klein
Breadth-first search
Expansion order:
(S,d,e,p,b,c,e,h,r,
q,a,a,
h,r,p,q,f,p,q,f,q,c,
G)
Depth-first search
Expand deepest unexpanded node
Implementation: frontier is a LIFO queue
Depth-first search
Expansion
order:
(d,b,a,c,a,e,h,p,
q,q, r,f,c,a,G)
http://xkcd.com/761/
Analysis of search strategies
Strategies are evaluated along the following criteria:
Completeness: does it always find a solution if one exists?
Optimality: does it always find a least-cost solution?
Time complexity: number of nodes generated
Space complexity: maximum number of nodes in memory
Time and space complexity are measured in terms of
b: maximum branching factor of the search tree
d: depth of the optimal solution
m: maximum length of any path in the state space (may be
infinite)
Properties of breadth-first
search
Complete?
Yes (if branching factor b is finite)
Optimal?
Yes if cost = 1 per step
Time?
Number of nodes in a b-ary tree of depth d: O(bd)
(d is the depth of the optimal solution)
Space?
O(bd)
Space is the bigger problem (more than time)
Properties of depth-first search
Complete?
Fails in infinite-depth spaces, spaces with loops
Modify to avoid repeated states along path
complete in finite spaces
Optimal?
No returns the first solution it finds
Time?
Could be the time to reach a solution at maximum depth m:
O(bm)
Terrible if m is much larger than d
But if there are lots of solutions, may be much faster than BFS
Space?
O(bm), i.e., linear space!
Iterative deepening search
Use DFS as a subroutine
1. Check the root
2. Do a DFS searching for a path of length
1
3. If there is no path of length 1, do a DFS
searching for a path of length 2
4. If there is no path of length 2, do a DFS
searching for a path of length 3
Iterative deepening search
Iterative deepening search
Iterative deepening search
Iterative deepening search
Properties of iterative deepening
search
Complete?
Yes
Optimal?
Yes, if step cost = 1
Time?
(d+1)b0 + d b1 + (d-1)b2 + + bd = O(bd)
Space?
O(bd)
Search with varying step
costs
BFS finds the path with the fewest
steps, but does not always find the
cheapest path
Uniform-cost search
For each frontier node, save the total cost
of the path from the initial state to that
node
Expand the frontier node with the lowest
path cost
Implementation: frontier is a priority queue
ordered by path cost
Equivalent to breadth-first if step costs all
equal
Equivalent to Dijkstras algorithm in general
Uniform-cost search
example
Uniform-cost search
example
Expansion order:
(S,p,d,b,e,a,r,f,e,G)
Another example of uniform-cost
search
Source: Wikipedia
Properties of uniform-cost
search
Complete?
Yes, if step cost is greater than some positive
constant (we dont want infinite sequences of
steps that have a finite total cost)
Optimal?
Yes
Optimality of uniform-cost
search
Graph separation property: every path from
the initial state to an unexplored state has to pass
through a state on the frontier
Proved inductively
Optimality of UCS: proof by contradiction
Suppose UCS terminates at goal state n with
path cost
g(n) = C but there exists another goal state n
with g(n) < C
Then there must exist a node n on the frontier
that is on the optimal path to n
But because g(n) g(n) < g(n), n should
have been expanded first!
Properties of uniform-cost
search
Complete?
Yes, if step cost is greater than some positive constant
(we dont want infinite sequences of steps that have a
finite total cost)
Optimal?
Yes nodes expanded in increasing order of path cost
Time?
Number of nodes with path cost cost of optimal
solution (C*), O(bC*/ )
This can be greater than O(bd): the search can explore
long paths consisting of small steps before exploring
shorter paths consisting of larger steps
Space?
O(bC*/ )
