Artificial Intelligence

Informed Search
Recap: Search
 Recap: Search

 Search problem:
 States (configurations of the world)
 Actions and costs
 Successor function (world dynamics)
 Start state and goal test

 Search tree:
 Nodes: represent plans for reaching states
 Plans have costs (sum of action costs)

 Search algorithm:
 Systematically builds a search tree
 Chooses an ordering of the fringe (unexplored nodes)
 Optimal: finds least-cost plans
Example: Pancake Problem

Cost: Number of pancakes flipped

 Example: Pancake Problem
State space graph with costs as weights

4
2 3
2
3

4
3
4 2

3 2
2
4

3
 General Tree Search

Action: flip top two Action: fliptoallreach

Path four goal:
Cost: 2 Cost:
Flip 4 flip three
four,
Total cost: 7
Uninformed Search
 Uniform Cost Search

 Strategy: expand lowest path cost … c≤1

c≤2
c≤3

 The good: UCS is complete and optimal!

 The bad:
 Explores options in every “direction” Start Goal
 No information about goal location

[Demo: contours UCS empty (L3D1)]

[Demo: contours UCS pacman small maze (L3D3)]
Informed Search
 Search Heuristics
 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

10

5
11.2
Example: Heuristic Function

h(x)
 Example: Heuristic Function
Heuristic: the number of the largest pancake that is still out of place
3
4
h(x)

3
4
3 0
4
4 3
4
4 2
3
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:
 Best-first takes you straight to the (wrong) goal …
b

 Worst-case: like a badly-guided DFS

[Demo: contours greedy empty (L3D1)]

[Demo: contours greedy pacman small maze (L3D4)]
A* Search
 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
e h=1 g=1
1 h=5 a

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 c G d
g = 10
h=7 h=0 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
 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!
Admissible Heuristics
 Idea: Admissibility

Inadmissible (pessimistic) heuristics break Admissible (optimistic) heuristics slow down

optimality by trapping good plans on the fringe bad plans but never outweigh true costs
 Admissible Heuristics
 A heuristic h is admissible (optimistic) if:

where is the true cost to a nearest goal

 Examples:
4
15

 Coming up with admissible heuristics is most of what’s involved

in using A* in practice.
Optimality of A* Tree Search
 Optimality of A* Tree Search
Assume:
 A is an optimal goal node …
 B is a suboptimal goal node
 h is admissible

Claim:
 A will exit the fringe before B
 Optimality of A* Tree Search: Blocking
Proof:
…
 Imagine B is on the fringe
 Some ancestor n of A is on the
fringe, too (maybe A!)
 Claim: n will be expanded before B
1. f(n) is less or equal to f(A)

Definition of f-cost
Admissibility of h
h = 0 at a goal
 Optimality of A* Tree Search: Blocking
Proof:
…
 Imagine B is on the fringe
 Some ancestor n of A is on the
fringe, too (maybe A!)
 Claim: n will be expanded before B
1. f(n) is less or equal to f(A)
2. f(A) is less than f(B)

B is suboptimal
h = 0 at a goal
 Optimality of A* Tree Search: Blocking
Proof:
…
 Imagine B is on the fringe
 Some ancestor n of A is on the
fringe, too (maybe A!)
 Claim: n will be expanded before B
1. f(n) is less or equal to f(A)
2. f(A) is less than f(B)
3. n expands before B
 All ancestors of A expand before B
 A expands before B
 A* search is optimal
Properties of A*
 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

[Demo: contours UCS / greedy / A* empty (L3D1)]

[Demo: contours A* pacman small maze (L3D5)]
 Comparison

Greedy Uniform Cost A*

 A* Applications
 Video games
 Pathing / routing problems
 Resource planning problems
 Robot motion planning
 Language analysis
 Machine translation
 Speech recognition
 …
[Demo: UCS / A* pacman tiny maze (L3D6,L3D7)]
[Demo: guess algorithm Empty Shallow/Deep (L3D8)]
Video of Demo Pacman (Tiny Maze) – UCS / A*
Video of Demo Empty Water Shallow/Deep – Guess Algorithm
 Creating Admissible Heuristics
 Most of the work in solving hard search problems optimally is in coming up
with admissible heuristics

 Often, admissible heuristics are solutions to relaxed problems, where new

actions are available

366
15

 Inadmissible heuristics are often useful too

 Example: 8 Puzzle

Start State Actions Goal State

 What are the states?

 How many states?
 What are the actions?
 How many successors from the start state?
 What should the costs be?
 8 Puzzle I
 Heuristic: Number of tiles misplaced
 Why is it admissible?
 h(start) = 8
 This is a relaxed-problem heuristic
Start State Goal State

Average nodes expanded

when the optimal path has…
…4 steps …8 steps …12 steps
UCS 112 6,300 3.6 x 106
TILES 13 39 227

Statistics from Andrew Moore

 8 Puzzle II

 What if we had an easier 8-puzzle where

any tile could slide any direction at any
time, ignoring other tiles?

 Total Manhattan distance

Start State Goal State

 Why is it admissible?
Average nodes expanded
 h(start) = 3 + 1 + 2 + … = 18 when the optimal path has…
…4 steps …8 steps …12 steps
TILES 13 39 227
MANHATTAN 12 25 73
 8 Puzzle III
 How about using the actual cost as a heuristic?
 Would it be admissible?
 Would we save on nodes expanded?
 What’s wrong with it?

 With A*: a trade-off between quality of estimate and work per node
 As heuristics get closer to the true cost, you will expand fewer nodes but usually
do more work per node to compute the heuristic itself
Semi-Lattice of Heuristics
 Trivial Heuristics, Dominance

 Dominance: ha ≥ hc if

 Heuristics form a semi-lattice:

 Max of admissible heuristics is admissible

 Trivial heuristics
 Bottom of lattice is the zero heuristic (what
does this give us?)
 Top of lattice is the exact heuristic
Graph Search
 Tree Search: Extra Work!
 Failure to detect repeated states can cause exponentially more work.

State Graph Search Tree

 Graph Search
 In BFS, for example, we shouldn’t bother expanding the circled nodes (why?)

d e p

b c e h r q

a a h r p q f

p q f q c G

q c G a

a
 Graph Search
 Idea: never expand a state twice

 How to implement:
 Tree search + set of expanded states (“closed set”)
 Expand the search tree node-by-node, but…
 Before expanding a node, check to make sure its state has never been
expanded before
 If not new, skip it, if new add to closed set

 Important: store the closed set as a set, not a list

 Can graph search wreck completeness? Why/why not?

 How about optimality?

 A* Graph Search Gone Wrong?
State space graph Search tree

A S (0+2)
1
1
S h=4
C
h=1 A (1+4) B (1+1)
h=2 1
2

B
3 C (2+1) C (3+1)

h=1
G G (5+0) G (6+0)

h=0
 Consistency of Heuristics
 Main idea: estimated heuristic costs ≤ actual costs

A  Admissibility: heuristic cost ≤ actual cost to goal

1 h(A) ≤ actual cost from A to G

h=4 C h=1
 Consistency: heuristic “arc” cost ≤ actual cost for each arc
h=2
h(A) – h(C) ≤ cost(A to C)
3
 Consequences of consistency:
 The f value along a path never decreases
G h(A) ≤ cost(A to C) + h(C)

 A* graph search is optimal

Optimality of A* Graph Search
 Optimality of A* Graph Search

 Sketch: consider what A* does with a

consistent heuristic:
… f≤1
 Fact 1: In tree search, A* expands nodes in
f≤2
increasing total f value (f-contours)
f≤3
 Fact 2: For every state s, nodes that reach
s optimally are expanded before nodes
that reach s suboptimally

 Result: A* graph search is optimal

 Optimality
 Tree search:
 A* is optimal if heuristic is admissible
 UCS is a special case (h = 0)

 Graph search:
 A* optimal if heuristic is consistent
 UCS optimal (h = 0 is consistent)

 Consistency implies admissibility

 In general, most natural admissible heuristics

tend to be consistent, especially if from
relaxed problems
A*: Summary
 A*: Summary
 A* uses both backward costs and (estimates of) forward costs

 A* is optimal with admissible / consistent heuristics

 Heuristic design is key: often use relaxed problems

Tree Search Pseudo-Code
Graph Search Pseudo-Code