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AI - Solving Problems by Search 1

The document discusses problem solving by search in artificial intelligence. It outlines problem types like deterministic vs non-deterministic problems and provides examples like navigating between cities in Romania or vacuuming rooms. It describes formulating problems as states, actions, and goals. The document then covers basic search algorithms like breadth-first search, depth-first search, and uniform cost search and their properties like completeness and optimality.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)

114 views56 pages

AI - Solving Problems by Search 1

Uploaded by

chakravarthyashok

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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

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Solving problems by searching

Chapter 3

AI - Solving Problems by Search 1

Outline
 Problem-solving agents
 Problem types
 Problem formulation
 Example problems
 Basic search algorithms

AI - Solving Problems by Search 2

Problem-solving agents

AI - Solving Problems by Search 3

Example: Romania
 On holiday in Romania; currently in Arad.
 Flight leaves tomorrow from Bucharest
 Formulate goal:
 be in Bucharest
 Formulate problem:
 states: various cities
 actions: drive between cities
 Find solution:
 sequence of cities, e.g., Arad, Sibiu, Fagaras, Bucharest



AI - Solving Problems by Search 4

Example: Romania

AI - Solving Problems by Search 5

Problem types
 Deterministic, fully observable  single-state problem
 Agent knows exactly which state it will be in; solution is a sequence
 Non-observable  sensorless problem (conformant
problem)
 Agent may have no idea where it is; solution is a sequence
 Nondeterministic and/or partially observable  contingency
problem
 percepts provide new information about current state
 often interleave} search, execution
 Unknown state space  exploration problem



AI - Solving Problems by Search 6
Example: vacuum world
 Single-state, start in #5.
Solution?


AI - Solving Problems by Search 7

Example: vacuum world
 Single-state, start in #5.
Solution? [Right, Suck]

 Sensorless, start in
{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8} e.g.,
Right goes to {2,4,6,8}
Solution?


AI - Solving Problems by Search 8

Example: vacuum world
 Sensorless, start in
{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8} e.g.,
Right goes to {2,4,6,8}
Solution?
[Right,Suck,Left,Suck]

 Contingency
 Nondeterministic: Suck may
dirty a clean carpet
 Partially observable: location, dirt at current location.
 Percept: [L, Clean], i.e., start in #5 or #7
Solution?


AI - Solving Problems by Search 9
Example: vacuum world
 Sensorless, start in
{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8} e.g.,
Right goes to {2,4,6,8}
Solution?
[Right,Suck,Left,Suck]

 Contingency
 Nondeterministic: Suck may
dirty a clean carpet
 Partially observable: location, dirt at current location.
 Percept: [L, Clean], i.e., start in #5 or #7
Solution? [Right, if dirt then Suck]

AI - Solving Problems by Search 10
Single-state problem formulation
A problem is defined by four items:

1. initial state e.g., "at Arad"

2. actions or successor function S(x) = set of action–state pairs
 e.g., S(Arad) = {<Arad  Zerind, Zerind>, … }
3. goal test, can be
 explicit, e.g., x = "at Bucharest"
 implicit, e.g., Checkmate(x)
4. path cost (additive)
 e.g., sum of distances, number of actions executed, etc.
 c(x,a,y) is the step cost, assumed to be ≥ 0

 A solution is a sequence of actions leading from the initial state to a

goal state



 AI - Solving Problems by Search 11

Selecting a state space
 Real world is absurdly complex
 state space must be abstracted for problem solving
 (Abstract) state = set of real states
 (Abstract) action = complex combination of real actions
 e.g., "Arad  Zerind" represents a complex set of possible routes,
detours, rest stops, etc.
 For guaranteed realizability, any real state "in Arad“ must
get to some real state "in Zerind"
 (Abstract) solution =
 set of real paths that are solutions in the real world
 Each abstract action should be "easier" than the original
problem


 AI - Solving Problems by Search 12

Vacuum world state space graph

 states?
 actions?
 goal test?
 path cost?

AI - Solving Problems by Search 13
Vacuum world state space graph


states? integer dirt and robot location
 actions? Left, Right, Suck
 goal test? no dirt at all locations
 path cost? 1 per action

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Example: The 8-puzzle

 states?
 actions?
 goal test?
 path cost?

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Example: The 8-puzzle

 states? locations of tiles

 actions? move blank left, right, up, down
 goal test? = goal state (given)
 path cost? 1 per move

[Note: optimal solution of n-Puzzle family is NP-hard]

AI - Solving Problems by Search 16


Example: robotic assembly

 states?: real-valued coordinates of robot joint

angles parts of the object to be assembled
 actions?: continuous motions of robot joints
 goal test?: complete assembly
 path cost?: time to execute

 AI - Solving Problems by Search 17
Tree search algorithms
 Basic idea:
 offline, simulated exploration of state space by
generating successors of already-explored states
(a.k.a.~expanding states)


AI - Solving Problems by Search 18

Tree search example

AI - Solving Problems by Search 19

Tree search example

AI - Solving Problems by Search 20

Tree search example

AI - Solving Problems by Search 21

Implementation: general tree search

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Implementation: states vs. nodes
 A state is a (representation of) a physical configuration
 A node is a data structure constituting part of a search tree
includes state, parent node, action, path cost g(x), depth

 The Expand function creates new nodes, filling in the

various fields and using the SuccessorFn of the problem
to create the corresponding states.


AI - Solving Problems by Search 23

Search strategies
 A search strategy is defined by picking the order of node
expansion
 Strategies are evaluated along the following dimensions:
 completeness: does it always find a solution if one exists?
 time complexity: number of nodes generated
 space complexity: maximum number of nodes in memory
 optimality: does it always find a least-cost solution?
 Time and space complexity are measured in terms of
 b: maximum branching factor of the search tree
 d: depth of the least-cost solution
 m: maximum depth of the state space (may be ∞)


AI - Solving Problems by Search 24

Uninformed search strategies
 Uninformed search strategies use only the
information available in the problem
definition
 Breadth-first search
 Uniform-cost search
 Depth-first search
 Depth-limited search
 Iterative deepening search

AI - Solving Problems by Search 25
Breadth-first search
 Expand shallowest unexpanded node
 Implementation:
 fringe is a FIFO queue, i.e., new successors go
at end


AI - Solving Problems by Search 26

Breadth-first search
 Expand shallowest unexpanded node
 Implementation:
 fringe is a FIFO queue, i.e., new successors go
at end


AI - Solving Problems by Search 27

Breadth-first search
 Expand shallowest unexpanded node
 Implementation:
 fringe is a FIFO queue, i.e., new successors go
at end


AI - Solving Problems by Search 28

Breadth-first search
 Expand shallowest unexpanded node
 Implementation:
 fringe is a FIFO queue, i.e., new successors go
at end


AI - Solving Problems by Search 29

Properties of breadth-first search
 Complete? Yes (if b is finite)
 Time? 1+b+b2+b3+… +bd + b(bd-1) = O(bd+1)
 Space? O(bd+1) (keeps every node in memory)
 Optimal? Yes (if cost = 1 per step)

 Space is the bigger problem (more than time)




AI - Solving Problems by Search 30

Uniform-cost search
 Expand least-cost unexpanded node
 Implementation:
 fringe = queue ordered by path cost
 Equivalent to breadth-first if step costs all equal
 Complete? Yes, if step cost ≥ ε
 Time? # of nodes with g ≤ cost of optimal solution,
O(bceiling(C*/ ε)) where C* is the cost of the optimal solution
 Space? # of nodes with g ≤ cost of optimal solution,
O(bceiling(C*/ ε))
 Optimal? Yes – nodes expanded in increasing order of g(n)



AI - Solving Problems by Search 31

Depth-first search
 Expand deepest unexpanded node
 Implementation:
 fringe = LIFO queue, i.e., put successors at front
