Solving problems by searching

14 Jan 2004 CS 3243 - Blind Search 1

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

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Problem Solving
Understand the following aspects of problem
• What is the explicit goal of the problem
• What is implicit criteria for success
• What is the initial situation
• Ability to perform

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Problem Solving
• Goal transformation: where a goal is set of
acceptable states.
• Problem formation: choose the operators and
state space.
• search
• execute solution
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Problem-solving agents

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Example: farm
• On holiday in farm ;currently in house.
• Flight leaves tomorrow from farm
• Formulate goal:
– be in farm
• Formulate problem:
– states: various cities /places
– actions: drive between cities/places
• Find solution:
– sequence of cities, e.g., house , brewery, mcfarm, tcfarm
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Example: Romania

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Problem types
• Deterministic, fully observable single-state problem
– Agent knows exactly which state it will be in; solution is a sequence
• Non-observable  sensor less 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

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 Example: vacuum world
Single-state, start in #5.
Solution?
•

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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?
•14 Jan 2004 CS 3243 - Blind Search 10
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?

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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]
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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
3. e.g., S(Arad) = {<Arad  Zerind, Zerind>, … }
–
4. goal test, can be
– explicit, e.g., x = "at Bucharest"
– implicit, e.g., Checkmate(x)
–
5. 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
•
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Selecting a state space
• Real world is ridiculously 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

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Vacuum world state space graph

• states?
• actions?
• goal test?
• path cost?
•
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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)
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Example: robotic assembly

• states?: real-valued coordinates of robot joint angles

parts of the object to be assembley
• actions?: continuous motions of robot joints
•14 Jangoal
2004
test?: complete CSassembly
3243 - Blind Search 19
Tree search algorithms
• Basic idea:
• offline, simulated exploration of state space by generating
successors of already-explored states (a.k.a.~expanding
states)
–

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Tree search example

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Tree search example

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Tree search example

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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
14 Jan 2004
and using the SuccessorFn of the problem to create
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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 CSsolution
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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
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Breadth-first search
Expand shallowest unexpanded node
•
• Implementation:
• fringe is a FIFO queue, i.e., new successors go at end
–

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

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

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

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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)

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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)
)
•14 JanOptimal?
2004
Yes – nodes expanded in increasing order of g(n) 33
CS 3243 - Blind Search
Depth-first search
Expand deepest unexpanded node
•
• Implementation:
• fringe = LIFO queue, i.e., put successors at front
–

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Depth-first search
Expand deepest unexpanded node
•
• Implementation:
• fringe = LIFO queue, i.e., put successors at front
–

14 Jan 2004 CS 3243 - Blind Search 35

Depth-first search
Expand deepest unexpanded node
•
• Implementation:
• fringe = LIFO queue, i.e., put successors at front
–

14 Jan 2004 CS 3243 - Blind Search 36

Depth-first search
Expand deepest unexpanded node
•
• Implementation:
• fringe = LIFO queue, i.e., put successors at front
–

14 Jan 2004 CS 3243 - Blind Search 37

Depth-first search
Expand deepest unexpanded node
•
• Implementation:
• fringe = LIFO queue, i.e., put successors at front
–

14 Jan 2004 CS 3243 - Blind Search 38

Depth-first search
Expand deepest unexpanded node
•
• Implementation:
• fringe = LIFO queue, i.e., put successors at front
–

14 Jan 2004 CS 3243 - Blind Search 39

Depth-first search
Expand deepest unexpanded node
•
• Implementation:
• fringe = LIFO queue, i.e., put successors at front
–

14 Jan 2004 CS 3243 - Blind Search 40

Depth-first search
Expand deepest unexpanded node
•
• Implementation:
• fringe = LIFO queue, i.e., put successors at front
–

14 Jan 2004 CS 3243 - Blind Search 41

Depth-first search
Expand deepest unexpanded node
•
• Implementation:
• fringe = LIFO queue, i.e., put successors at front
–

14 Jan 2004 CS 3243 - Blind Search 42

Depth-first search
Expand deepest unexpanded node
•
• Implementation:
• fringe = LIFO queue, i.e., put successors at front
–

14 Jan 2004 CS 3243 - Blind Search 43

Depth-first search
Expand deepest unexpanded node
•
• Implementation:
• fringe = LIFO queue, i.e., put successors at front
–

14 Jan 2004 CS 3243 - Blind Search 44

Depth-first search
Expand deepest unexpanded node
•
• Implementation:
• fringe = LIFO queue, i.e., put successors at front
–

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Properties of depth-first search
• Complete? No: fails in infinite-depth spaces, spaces
with loops
– Modify to avoid repeated states along path
–  complete in finite spaces

• Time? O(bm): terrible if m is much larger than d

– but if solutions are dense, may be much faster than
breadth-first
– Space? O(bm), i.e.,CS 3243
14 Jan 2004 linear space!
- Blind Search 46
Depth-limited search
= depth-first search with depth limit l,
i.e., nodes at depth l have no successors

• Recursive implementation:

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Iterative deepening search

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Iterative deepening search l =0

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Iterative deepening search l =1

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Iterative deepening search l =2

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Iterative deepening search l =3

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Iterative deepening search
• Number of nodes generated in a depth-limited search to
depth d with branching factor b:
NDLS = b0 + b1 + b2 + … + bd-2 + bd-1 + bd
• Number of nodes generated in an iterative deepening search
to depth d with branching factor b:
NIDS = (d+1)b0 + d b^1 + (d-1)b^2 + … + 3bd-2 +2bd-1 + 1bd

• For b = 10, d = 5,
• NDLS = 1 + 10 + 100 + 1,000 + 10,000 + 100,000 = 111,111
–
–
14 Jan 2004 NIDS = 6 + 50 + 400 + 3,000
CS+ 20,000
3243 + 100,000 = 123,456
- Blind Search 53
Properties of iterative deepening search
Complete? Yes
•
• Time? (d+1)b0 + d b1 + (d-1)b2 + … + bd = O(bd)
•
• Space? O(bd)
•
• Optimal? Yes, if step cost = 1
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Summary of algorithms

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Repeated states
Failure to detect repeated states can turn a
linear problem into an exponential one!
•

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Graph search

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Summary
• Problem formulation usually requires abstracting away real-
world details to define a state space that can feasibly be
explored
• Variety of uninformed search strategies

• Iterative deepening search uses only linear space and not

much more time than other uninformed algorithms

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