Informed Search

The document discusses informed search techniques for artificial intelligence. It introduces the concept of a heuristic function that estimates how close a state is to the goal. It describes greedy search, which expands the node closest to the goal based on the heuristic, and A* search, which combines the cost to reach a node with the heuristic estimate to prioritize exploration. A* is shown to be optimal if the heuristic is admissible. Examples of heuristic functions and A* search are provided.

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Informed Search

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Artificial Intelligence

SEARCH AGENTS / INFORMED SEARCH

[These slides were created by Dan Klein and Pieter Abbeel for CS188 Intro to AI at UC Berkeley. All CS188 materials are available at http://ai.berkeley.edu.]

Some slides were taken from Columbia University AI course]

Informed search
Use domain knowledge!
• Are we getting close to the
goal?
• Use a heuristic function that
estimates how close a state is to
the goal
• A heuristic does NOT have to
be perfect!
• Example of strategies:
1. Greedy best-first search
2. A* search

https://s2.studylib.net/store/data/005619980_1-7549df02baee639673f2ec513575f462.png
Search
heuristic
 A heuristic is:
 A function that estimates how
close a state is to a goal
 Designed for a particular search
problem
 Examples: Manhattan distance,
Euclidean distance for pathing

https://thesaurus.plus/img/antonyms/577/heuristic.png
Search
heuristics

5
11.2
Informed
search

Heuristic!
Greedy search
• Evaluation function h(n) (heuristic)
• h(n) estimates the cost from n to the
closest goal
• Example: hSLD(n) = straight-line
distance from n to Sault Ste Marie
• Greedy search expands the node that
appears to be closest to goal
Greedy search example
The initial state:
Greedy search example
After expanding St Louis:
Greedy search example
After expanding Chicago:
Greedy search example
After expanding Duluth:
Examples using the map
Start: Saint Louis
Goal: Sault Ste Marie

Greedy search
Examples using the map
Start: Las Vegas
Goal: Calgary

Greedy search
Example: Heuristic Function

h(x)
Greedy Search
Expand the node that seems closest…

What can go wrong?

Greedy Search
b
…
Strategy: expand a node that you
think is closest to a goal state
◦ Heuristic: estimate of distance to
nearest goal for each state
A common case: b
◦ Best-first takes you straight to the …

(wrong) goal
Worst-case: like a badly-guided DFS
Properties of Gready Search
Video of Demo Contours Greedy (Empty)
Video of Demo Contours Greedy (Pacman Small Maze)
A* Search

UCS Greedy

A*
Combining UCS and Greedy
Uniform-cost orders by path cost, or backward cost g(n)
Greedy orders by goal proximity, or forward cost h(n)

8 g=0
S h=6
h=1 g=1
e a
1 h=5

1 3 2 g=2 g=9
S a d G
h=6 b d g=4 e h=1
h=6 h=5 h=2
1 h=2 h=0
1 g=3 g=6
c b g = 10
h=7 c G h=0 d
h=2
h=7 h=6
g = 12
G h=0
A* Search orders by the sum: f(n) = g(n) + h(n)
Example: Teg Grenager
F(n) is the estimated cost of the cheapest solution through n

A* search
• Minimize the total
estimated solution cost
• Combines:
- g(n): cost to reach node n
- h(n): cost to get from n to
the goal
- f(n) = g(n) + h(n)
A* search example
The initial state:
A* search example
After expanding St Louis:
A* search example
After expanding Chicago:
A* search example
After expanding Kansas City:
A* search example
After expanding Little Rock:
A* search example
After expanding Nashville:
A* search example
After expanding Pittsburgh:
A* search example
After expanding Toronto:
Examples using the map
Start: Saint Louis
Goal: Sault Ste Marie

A*
Example: Heuristic Function

h(x)
Examples using the map
Start: Las Vegas
Goal: Calgary

A*
When should A* terminate?
Should we stop when we enqueue a goal? h=2

2 A 2

S h=3 h=0 G

2 B 3
h=1
No: only stop when we dequeue a goal
Is A* Optimal? h=6

1 A 3

S h=7
G h=0

What went wrong?

Actual bad goal cost < estimated good goal cost
We need estimates to be less than actual costs!
Admissibilit
y
Inadmissible (pessimistic) heuristics break Admissible (optimistic) heuristics slow down
optimality by trapping good plans on the fringe bad plans, but never outweigh true costs
A* Optimality
If h(n) is admissible, A* using tree search is optimal.
A* Search Criteria
• Complete: Yes

• Time: exponential

• Space: keeps every node in memory, the biggest problem

• Optimal: Yes!
Properties of A*

Uniform-Cost A*

b b
… …
UCS vs A* Contours

Uniform-cost expands equally in all “directions”

Start Goal

A* expands mainly toward the goal, but does

hedge its bets to ensure optimality
Start Goal
Video of Demo Contours (Empty) --
UCS
Video of Demo Contours (Empty) --
Greedy
Video of Demo Contours (Empty) – A*
Video of Demo Contours (Pacman Small
Maze) – A*
Comparison

Greedy Uniform Cost A*

A*
applications
Video games
Pathing / routing problems
Resource planning problems
Robot motion planning
Language analysis
Machine translation
Speech recognition
http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/LongPath-1024x576.jpg …
Search Algorithms Recap
• Uninformed Search: Use no domain knowledge.
◦ BFS, DFS, DLS, IDS, UCS.
• Informed Search: Use a heuristic function that estimates
how close a state is to the goal.
◦ Greedy search, A*
DFS