CSM6120

Introduction to Intelligent Systems

Informed search

rkj@aber.ac.uk
Quick review
 Problem definition
 Initial state, goal state, state space, actions, goal function, path
cost function

 Factors
 Branching factor, depth of shallowest solution, maximum depth
of any path in search state, complexity, etc.

 Uninformed techniques
 BFS, DFS, Depth-limited, UCS, IDS
Informed search
 What we’ll look at:
 Heuristics

 Hill-climbing

 Best-first search
 Greedy search
 A* search
Heuristics
 A heuristic is a rule or principle used to guide a search
 It provides a way of giving additional knowledge of the problem
to the search algorithm
 Must provide a reasonably reliable estimate of how far a state
is from a goal, or the cost of reaching the goal via that state

 A heuristic evaluation function is a way of calculating or

estimating such distances/cost
Heuristics and algorithms
 A correct algorithm will find you the best solution given
good data and enough time
 It is precisely specified

 A heuristic gives you a workable solution in a reasonable

time
 It gives a guided or directed solution
Evaluation function
 There are an infinite number of possible heuristics
 Criteria is that it returns an assessment of the point in the
search

 If an evaluation function is accurate, it will lead directly to

the goal

 More realistically, this usually ends up as “seemingly-best-

search”

 Traditionally, the lowest value after evaluation is chosen as

we usually want the lowest cost or nearest
Heuristic evaluation functions
 Estimate of expected utility value from a current position
 E.g. value for pieces left in chess
 Way of judging the value of a position

 Humans have to do this as we do not evaluate all possible

alternatives
 These heuristics usually come from years of human experience

 Performance of a game playing program is very dependent

on the quality of the function
Heuristics?
Heuristic evaluation functions
 Must agree with the ordering a utility function would give
at terminal states (leaf nodes)

 Computation must not take long

 For non-terminal states, the evaluation function must

strongly correlate with the actual chance of ‘winning’

 The values can be learned using machine learning

techniques
Heuristics for the 8-puzzle
 Number of tiles out of place (h1)

 Manhattan distance (h2)

 Sum of the distance of each tile from its goal position
 Tiles can only move up or down  city blocks

0 1 2

3 4 5

6 7
The 8-puzzle
 Using a heuristic evaluation function:
 h2(n) = sum of the distance each tile is from its goal position
 Goal state
0 1 2

3 4 5

6 7
Current state Current state
0 1 2 0 2 5

3 4 5 3 1 7

6 7 6 4

h1=1 h1=5
h2=1 h2=1+1+1+2+2=7
Search algorithms
 Hill climbing

 Best-first search
 Greedy best-first search
 A*
Iterative improvement
 Consider all states laid out on the surface of a landscape

 The height at any point corresponds to the result of the

evaluation function
Iterative improvement
 Paths typically not retained - very little memory needed

 Move around the landscape trying to find the lowest

valleys - optimal solutions (or the highest peaks if trying
to maximise)
 Useful for hard, practical problems where the state description
itself holds all the information needed for a solution
 Find reasonable solutions in a large or infinite state space
Hill-climbing (greedy local)
 Start with current-state = initial-state
 Until current-state = goal-state OR there is no change
in current-state do:
 a) Get the children of current-state and apply evaluation
function to each child
 b) If one of the children has a better score, then set current-
state to the child with the best score

 Loop that moves in the direction of decreasing

(increasing) value
 Terminates when a “dip” (or “peak”) is reached
 If more than one best direction, the algorithm can choose at
random
Hill-climbing (gradient ascent)
Hill-climbing drawbacks
 Local minima (maxima)
 Local, rather than global minima (maxima)

 Plateau
 Area of state space where the evaluation function is essentially
flat
 The search will conduct a random walk

 Ridges
 Causes problems when states along the ridge are not directly
connected - the only choice at each point on the ridge
requires uphill (downhill) movement
Best-first search
 Like hill climbing, but eventually tries all paths as it uses
list of nodes yet to be explored

 Start with priority-queue = initial-state

 While priority-queue not empty do:
 a) Remove best node from the priority-queue
 b) If it is the goal node, return success. Otherwise find its
successors
 c) Apply evaluation function to successors and add to
priority-queue
Best-first example
Best-first search
 Different best-first strategies have different evaluation
functions

 Some use heuristics only, others also use cost functions:

f(n) = g(n) + h(n)

 For Greedy and A*, our heuristic is:

 Heuristic function h(n) = estimated cost of the cheapest path
from node n to a goal node
 For now, we will introduce the constraint that if n is a goal
node, then h(n) = 0
Greedy best-first search
 Greedy BFS tries to expand the node that is ‘closest’ to
the goal assuming it will lead to a solution quickly
 f(n) = h(n)
 aka “greedy search”

 Differs from hill-climbing – allows backtracking

 Implementation
 Expand the “most desirable” node into the frontier queue
 Sort the queue in decreasing order
Route planning: heuristic??
Route planning - GBFS
Greedy best-first search
Route planning
Greedy best-first search
Greedy best-first search

This happens to be the same search path

that hill-climbing would produce, as there’s
no backtracking involved (a solution is
found by expanding the first choice node
only, each time).
Greedy best-first search
 Complete
 No, GBFS can get stuck in loops (e.g. bouncing back and
forth between cities)

 Optimal
 No! (A – S – F – B = 450, shorter journey is possible)
A* search
 A* (A star) is the most widely known form of Best-First
search
 It evaluates nodes by combining g(n) and h(n) start

 f(n) = g(n) + h(n) g(n)

 where n

 g(n) = cost so far to reach n

 h(n) = estimated cost to goal from n h(n)
 f(n) = estimated total cost of path through n

goal
A* search
 When h(n) = h*(n) (h*(n) is actual cost to goal)
 Only nodes in the correct path are expanded
 Optimal solution is found

 When h(n) < h*(n)

 Additional nodes are expanded
 Optimal solution is found

 When h(n) > h*(n)

 Optimal solution can be overlooked
Route planning - A*
A* search
A* search
A* search
A* search
A* search
A* search
 Complete and optimal if h(n) does not overestimate the true
cost of a solution through n

 Time complexity
 Exponential in [relative error of h x length of solution]
 The better the heuristic, the better the time
 Best case h is perfect, O(d)
 Worst case h = 0, O(bd) same as BFS, UCS

 Space complexity
 Keeps all nodes in memory and save in case of repetition
 This is O(bd) or worse
 A* usually runs out of space before it runs out of time
 A* exercise

Node Coordinates SL Distance to K

A (5,9) 8.0
B (3,8) 7.3
C (8,8) 7.6
D (5,7) 6.0
E (7,6) 5.4
F (4,5) 4.1
G (6,5) 4.1
H (3,3) 2.8
I (5,3) 2.0
J (7,2) 2.2
K (5,1) 0.0
Solution to A* exercise
GBFS exercise

Node Coordinates Distance

A (5,9) 8.0
B (3,8) 7.3
C (8,8) 7.6
D (5,7) 6.0
E (7,6) 5.4
F (4,5) 4.1
G (6,5) 4.1
H (3,3) 2.8
I (5,3) 2.0
J (7,2) 2.2
K (5,1) 0.0
Solution
Exercise-2
To think about...
f(n) = g(n) + h(n)

 What algorithm does A* emulate if we set

 h(n) = -g(n) - depth(n)
 h(n) = 0

 Can you make A* behave like Breadth-First Search?

A* search - Mario
 http://aigamedev.com/open/interviews/mario-ai/
 Control of Super Mario by an A* search
 Source code available
 Various videos and explanations
 Written in Java
Admissible heuristics
 A heuristic h(n) is admissible if for every node n,
h(n) ≤ h*(n), where h*(n) is the true cost to reach the goal
state from n
 An admissible heuristic never overestimates the cost to reach the
goal
 Example: hSLD(n) (never overestimates the actual road distance)

 Theorem: If h(n) is admissible, A* is optimal (for tree-search)

Optimality of A* (proof)
 Suppose some suboptimal goal G2 has been generated and is in the frontier.
Let n be an unexpanded node in the frontier such that n is on a shortest
path to an optimal goal G

 f(G2) = g(G2) since h(G2) = 0 (true for any goal state)

 g(G2) > g(G) since G2 is suboptimal
 f(G) = g(G) since h(G) = 0
 f(G2) > f(G) from above
Optimality of A* (proof)

 f(G2) > f(G)

 h(n) ≤ h*(n) since h is admissible
 g(n) + h(n) ≤ g(n) + h*(n)
 f(n) ≤ f(G) (f(G) = g(G) = g(n) + h*(n))

 Hence f(G2) > f(n), and A* will never select G2 for expansion
Heuristic functions
 Admissible heuristic example: for the 8-puzzle

h1(n) = number of misplaced tiles

h2(n) = total Manhattan distance
i.e. no of squares from desired location of
each tile

h1(S) = ??
h2(S) = ??
Heuristic functions
 Admissible heuristic example: for the 8-puzzle

h1(n) = number of misplaced tiles

h2(n) = total Manhattan distance
i.e. no of squares from desired location of
each tile

h1(S) = 6
h2(S) = 4+0+3+3+1+0+2+1
= 14
Heuristic functions
 Dominance/Informedness
 if h2(n)  h1(n) for all n (both admissible)
then h2 dominates h1 and is better for search

Typical search costs: (8 puzzle, d = solution length)

 d = 12 IDS = 3,644,035 nodes
A*(h1) = 227 nodes
A*(h2) = 73 nodes

 d = 24 IDS  54,000,000,000 nodes

A*(h1) = 39,135 nodes
A*(h2) = 1,641 nodes
Heuristic functions
 Admissible heuristic
But how do we come up with a
example: for the 8-puzzle heuristic?

h1(n) = number of misplaced tiles

h2(n) = total Manhattan distance
i.e. no of squares from desired location of
each tile

h1(S) = 6
h2(S) = 4+0+3+3+1+0+2+1
= 14
Relaxed problems
 Admissible heuristics can be derived from the exact
solution cost of a relaxed version of the problem
 E.g. If the rules of the 8-puzzle are relaxed so that a tile can
move anywhere, then h1(n) gives the shortest solution
 If the rules are relaxed so that a tile can move to any adjacent
square, then h2(n) gives the shortest solution

 Key point: the optimal solution cost of a relaxed problem is

no greater than the optimal solution cost of the real
problem
Choosing a strategy
 What sort of search problem is this?

 How big is the search space?

 What is known about the search space?

 What methods are available for this kind of search?

 How well do each of the methods work for each kind of

problem?
Which method?
 Exhaustive search for small finite spaces when it is
essential that the optimal solution is found

 A* for medium-sized spaces if heuristic knowledge is

available

 Random search for large evenly distributed homogeneous

spaces

 Hill climbing for discrete spaces where a sub-optimal

solution is acceptable
Summary
 What is search for?

 How do we define/represent a problem?

 How do we find a solution to a problem?

 Are we doing this in the best way possible?

 What if search space is too large?

 Can use other approaches, e.g. GAs, ACO, PSO...
Finally
 Try the A* exercise on the course website (solutions will be
made available later)

 Next seminar on Monday at 9:30am

 See the algorithms in action:

 http://web.archive.org/web/20110719085935/http://www.stefan-
baur.de/cs.web.mashup.pathfinding.html