Problem Solving – Basic

Search methods

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Problem Characteristics

◼ Heuristic search is a very general method

applicable to a large class of problems.
◼ In order to choose the most appropriate
method (or combination of methods) for a
particular problem it is necessary to analyze
the problem along several key dimensions.
❑ Is the problem decomposable into a set of
independent smaller sub problems?
◼ Decomposable problems can be solved by the divide-
and-conquer technique.

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 Contd..
◼ Use of decomposing problems:
❑ Each sub-problem is simpler to solve.
❑ Each sub-problem can be handed over to a
different processor. Thus it can be solved in
parallel processing environment.

◼ There are non decomposable problems.

❑ For example, Block world problem is non
decomposable.

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 Initial State (State0) Goal State

A
C B
A B C

Start: ON(C, A) ….
Goal: ON(B, C)  ON(A, B)

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Contd..

◼ Can solution steps be ignored or at least

undone if they prove to be unwise?
◼ In real life, there are three types of problems:
❑ Ignorable,
❑ Recoverable and
❑ Irrecoverable.

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Example - Ignorable

◼ (Ignorable): In theorem proving -

(solution steps can be ignored)
❑ Suppose we have proved some lemma in
order to prove a theorem and eventually
realized that lemma is no help at all, then
ignore it and prove another lemma.
❑ Can be solved by using simple control
strategy?

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Example - Recoverable
◼ 8 puzzle game - (solution steps can be undone)
❑ Objective of 8 puzzle game is to rearrange a given
initial configuration of eight numbered tiles on
3 X 3 board (one place is empty) into a given final
configuration (goal state).
◼ Rearrangement is done by sliding one of the tiles into
empty square.
❑ Steps can be undone if they are not leading to
solution.
❑ Solved by backtracking, so control strategy must
be implemented using a push down stack.

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Example - Irrecoverable

◼ Chess (solution steps cannot be

undone)
❑ A stupid move cannot be undone.
❑ Can be solved by planning process.

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Contd..

◼ What is the Role of knowledge?

❑ In Chess game, knowledge is important to
constrain the search
❑ Newspapers scanning to decide some facts, a
lot of knowledge is required even to be able to
recognize a solution.
◼ Is the knowledge Base consistent?
❑ Should not have contradiction

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Contd…

◼ Is a good solution Absolute or Relative ?

❑ In water jug problem there are two ways to solve
a problem.
◼ If we follow one path successfully to the solution,
there is no reason to go back and see if some other
path might also lead to a solution.
◼ Here a solution is absolute.
◼ In travelling salesman problem, our goal is to
find the shortest route. Unless all routes are
known, the shortest route is difficult to know.
❑ This is a best-path problem whereas water jug is
any-path problem.
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Contd…

◼ Any path problem can often be solved in

reasonable amount of time using heuristics that
suggest good paths to explore.
◼ Best path problems are in general
computationally harder than any-path.

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Problem Solving

◼ AI programs have a clean separation of

❑ computational components of data,
❑ operations & control.
◼ Search forms the core of many intelligent
processes.
◼ It is useful to structure AI programs in a
way that facilitates describing the search
process.

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Production System - PS

◼ PS is a formation for structuring AI programs

which facilitates describing search process.
◼ It consists of
❑ Initial or start state of the problem
❑ Final or goal state of the problem
❑ It consists of one or more databases containing
information appropriate for the particular task.
◼ The information in databases may be structured
❑ using knowledge representation schemes.

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Production Rules

◼ PS contains set of production rules,

❑ each consisting of a left side that determines the
applicability of the rule and
❑ a right side that describes the action to be performed if
the rule is applied.
❑ These rules operate on the databases.
❑ Application of rules changes the database.
◼ A control strategy that specifies the order in which
the rules will be applied when several rules match
at once.
◼ One of the examples of Production Systems is an
Expert System.

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Advantages of PS

◼ In addition to its usefulness as a way to

describe search, the production model has other
advantages as a formalism in AI.
❑ It is a good way to model the strong state driven
nature of intelligent action.
❑ As new inputs enter the database, the behavior of the
system changes.
❑ New rules can easily be added to account for new
situations without disturbing the rest of the system,
which is quite important in real-time environment.

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Example : Water Jug Problem

◼ Problem statement:
❑ Given two jugs, a 4-gallon and 3-gallon having no
measuring markers on them. There is a pump that can be
used to fill the jugs with water. How can you get exactly 2
gallons of water into 4-gallon jug.
◼ Solution:
❑ State for this problem can be described as the set of
ordered pairs of integers (X, Y) such that
◼ X represents the number of gallons of water in 4-gallon jug
and
◼ Y for 3-gallon jug.
❑ Start state is (0,0)
❑ Goal state is (2, N) for any value of N.

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Production Rules
◼ Following are the production rules for this problem.

R1: (X, Y | X < 4) → (4, Y)

{Fill 4-gallon jug}
R2: (X, Y | Y < 3) → (X, 3)
{Fill 3-gallon jug}
R3: (X, Y | X > 0) → (0, Y)
{Empty 4-gallon jug}
R4: (X, Y | Y > 0) → (X, 0)
{Empty 3-gallon jug}
R5: (X, Y | X+Y >= 4  Y > 0) →(4, Y – (4 – X))
{Pour water from 3- gallon
jug into 4-gallon jug until
4-gallon jug is full}

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Contd..
R6: (X, Y | X+Y >= 3  X > 0) → (X – (3 – Y), 3)
{Pour water from 4-gallon jug into 3-
gallon jug until 3-gallon jug is full}
R7: (X, Y | X+Y <= 4  Y > 0) → (X+Y, 0)
{Pour all water from 3-gallon jug into
4-gallon jug }
R8: (X, Y | X+Y <= 3  X > 0) → (0, X+Y)
{Pour all water from 4-gallon jug into
3-gallon jug }

Superficial Rules: {May not be used in this problem}

R9: (X, Y | X > 0) → (X – D, Y)
{Pour some water D out from 4-gallon jug}

R10: (X, Y | Y > 0) → (X, Y - D)

{Pour some water D out from 3- gallon jug}

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Trace of steps involved in solving the water
jug problem - First solution

Number Rules applied 4-g 3-g

of Steps jug jug
1 Initial State 0 0
2 R2 {Fill 3-g jug} 0 3
3 R7{Pour all water from 3 to 4-g jug } 3 0
4 R2 {Fill 3-g jug} 3 3
5 R5 {Pour from 3 to 4-g jug until it is full} 4 2
6 R3 {Empty 4-gallon jug} 0 2
7 R7 {Pour all water from 3 to 4-g jug} 2 0 Goal State

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Trace of steps involved in solving the water
jug problem - Second solution
◼ Note that there may be more than one solutions.

Number Rules applied 4-g 3-g

of steps jug jug
1 Initial State 0 0
2 R1 {Fill 4-gallon jug} 4 0
3 R6 {Pour from 4 to 3-g jug until it is full } 1 3
4 R4 {Empty 3-gallon jug} 1 0
5 R8 {Pour all water from 4 to 3-gallon jug} 0 1
6 R1 {Fill 4-gallon jug} 4 1
7 R6 {Pour from 4 to 3-g jug until it is full} 2 3
8 R4 {Empty 3-gallon jug} 2 0 Goal State

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Important Points
◼ For each problem
❑ there is an initial description of the problem.
❑ final description of the problem.
❑ more than one ways of solving the problem.
❑ a path between various solution paths based on some
criteria of goodness or on some heuristic function is
chosen.
❑ there are a set of rules that describe the actions called
production rules.
◼ Left side of the rules is current state and right side describes
new state that results from applying the rule.

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◼ Summary: In order to provide a formal description of
a problem, it is necessary to do the following things:
❑ Define a state space that contains all the possible
configurations of the relevant objects.
❑ Specify one or more states within that space that describe
possible situations from which the problem solving process
may start. These states are called initial states.
❑ Specify one or more states that would be acceptable as
solutions to the problem called goal states.
❑ Specify a set of rules that describe the actions. Order of
application of the rules is called control strategy.
❑ Control strategy should cause motion towards a solution.

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Control Strategies
◼ Control Strategy decides which rule to apply next during
the process of searching for a solution to a problem.
◼ Requirements for a good Control Strategy
❑ It should cause motion
In water jug problem, if we apply a simple control strategy of
starting each time from the top of rule list and choose the first
applicable one, then we will never move towards solution.

❑ It should explore the solution space in a systematic manner

If we choose another control strategy, say, choose a rule
randomly from the applicable rules then definitely it causes
motion and eventually will lead to a solution. But one may arrive
at the same state several times. This is because control strategy
is not systematic.

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Systematic Control Strategies (Blind searches)

◼ Blind searches are exhaustive in nature.

◼ These are uninformed searches.
◼ If the problem is simple then
❑ any control strategy that causes motion and is systematic
will lead to an answer.
◼ But in order to solve some real world problems,
❑ we must use a control strategy that is efficient.
◼ Let us discuss these strategies using water jug
problem.
◼ These may be applied to any search problem.

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Breadth First Search – BFS : Water Jug Problem
◼ BFS
❑ Construct a tree with the initial state of the problem as its root.
❑ Generate all the offspring of the root by applying each of the applicable
rules to the initial state.
❑ For each leaf node, generate all its successors by applying all the rules
that are appropriate.
❑ Repeat this process till we find a solution, if it exists.

(0, 0)

(4, 0) (0, 3)

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 (0, 0)

(4, 0) (0, 3)

(4, 3) (0, 0) (1, 3) (4, 3) (0, 0) (3, 0)

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Depth First Search - DFS

◼ Here we pursue a single branch of the

tree until it yields a solution or some pre-
specified depth has reached.
◼ If solution is not found then
❑ go back to immediate previous node and
❑ explore other branches in DF fashion.
◼ Let us see the tree formation for water
jug problem using DFS

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 (0, 0) Start State

(4, 0)

(4, 3) (0, 0) (1, 3)

(0, 3) (4, 0)

 (4, 3)  (0, 0) (3, 0)

(3, 3) (0, 0) (0, 3)

 (3, 0)  (0, 3) (4, 2)

(0, 2) (3, 3) (4, 0)

 (4, 2)  (0, 0) (2, 0) Goal state

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Traveling Salesman Problem

◼ Consider 5 cities.
❑ A salesman is supposed to visit each of 5 cities.
❑ All cities are pair wise connected by roads.
❑ There is one start city.
❑ The problem is to find the shortest route for the
salesman who has to
◼ visit each city only once and
◼ returns to back to start city.

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 Traveling Salesman Problem (Example) – Start city is C1

C1

7 12 15 11
20
C2 10 13 C3

12 C4 17
5

C5
D(C1,C2) = 7; D(C1,C3) = 11; D(C1,C4) = 12; D(C1,C5) = 15; D(C2,C3) =20;

D(C2,C4) = 10; D(C2,C5) =12; D(C3,C4) =13; D(C3,C5) = 17; D(C4,C5) =5;

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Contd..

◼ A simple motion causing and systematic control

structure could, in principle solve this problem.
◼ Explore the search tree of all possible paths and
return the shortest path.
◼ This will require 4! paths to be examined.
◼ If number of cities grow, say 25 cities, then the time
required to wait a salesman to get the information
about the shortest path is of 0(24!) which is not a
practical situation.

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Contd..
◼ This phenomenon is called combinatorial
explosion.
◼ We can improve the above strategy as follows:
❑ Begin generating complete paths, keeping track of the
shortest path found so far.
❑ Give up exploring any path as soon as its partial
length becomes greater than the shortest path found
so far.
❑ This algorithm is efficient than the first one, still
requires exponential time  some number raised to N
(number of cities).

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Paths explored. Assume C1 to be the start city Distance

1. C1 → C2 → C3 → C4 → C5 → C1 current best path 60  

7 20 13 5 15
27 40 45 60
2. C1 → C2 → C3 → C5 → C4 → C1 61 
7 20 17 5 12
27 44 49 61
3. C1 → C2 → C4 → C3 → C5 → C1 72 
7 10 13 17 15
17 40 57 72
4. C1 → C2 → C4 → C5 → C3 → C1 current best path, cross path 50  
7 10 5 17 11 at S.No 1.
17 22 39 50
5. C1 → C2 → C5 → C3 → C4 → C1 61 
7 12 17 13 12
19 36 49 61
6. C1 → C2 → C5 → C4 → C3 → C1 current best path, cross path 48 
7 12 5 13 11 at S.No. 4.
19 24 37 48
7. C1 → C3 → C2 → C4 → C5 (not to be expanded further) 52 
7 20 10 5
37 47 52
8. C1 → C3 → C2 → C5 → C4 (not to be expanded further) 54 
11 20 12 5
37 49 54
9. C1 → C3 → C4 → C2 → C5 → C1 61 
11 13 10 12 15
24 34 46 61
10. C1 → C3 → C4 → C5 → C2 → C1 same as current best path 48 
11 13 5 12 7 at S. No. 6.
24 29 41 48
11. C1 → C3 → C5 → C2 (not to be expanded further) 50 
11 17 12
38 50
12. C1 → C3 → C5 → C4 → C2 (not to be expanded further) 53 
11 17 5 10
38 43 53
13. C1 → C4 → C2 → C3 → C5 (not to be expanded further) 59 
12 10 20 17
22 42 55
Continue like this

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 Missionaries and Cannibals
◼ Problem Statement: Three missionaries and
three cannibals want to cross a river. There is a
boat on their side of the river that can be used by
either one or two persons.
❑ How should they use this boat to cross the river in such
a way that cannibals never outnumber missionaries on
either side of the river? If the cannibals ever outnumber
the missionaries (on either bank) then the missionaries
will be eaten. How can they all cross over without
anyone being eaten?

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Contd…

◼ PS for this problem can be described as the set

of ordered pairs of left and right bank of the river
as (L, R) where each bank is represented as a
list [nM, mC, B]
❑ n is the number of missionaries M, m is the number of
cannibals C, and B represents boat.
◼ Start state: ( [3M, 3C, 1B], [0M, 0C, 0B] ),
❑ 1B means that boat is present and 0B means it is not
there on the bank of river.
◼ Goal state: ( [0M, 0C, 0B], [3M, 3C, 1B] )

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Contd…
◼ Any state: ([n1M, m1C, 1B], [n2 M, m2 C, 0B]) ,
with constraints/conditions as n1 (0) ≥
m1; n2 (0) ≥ m2; n1 + n2 = 3, m1 + m2 = 3
❑ By no means, this representation is unique.
❑ In fact one may have number of different
representations for the same problem.
❑ The table on the next slide consists of
production rules based on the chosen
representation.

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 Set of Production Rules
Applied keeping constrains in mind

RN Left side of rule → Right side of rule

Rules for boat going from left bank to right bank of the river
L1 ([n1M, m1C, 1B], [n2M, m2C, 0B]) → ([(n1-2)M, m1C, 0B], [(n2+2)M, m2C, 1B])
L2 ([n1M, m1C, 1B], [n2M, m2C, 0B]) → ([(n1-1)M,(m1-1)C,0B],[(n2+1)M,(m2+1)C, 1B])
L3 ([n1M, m1C, 1B], [n2M, m2C, 0B]) → ([n1M, (m1-2)C, 0B], [n2M, (m2+2)C, 1B])
L4 ([n1M, m1C, 1B], [n2M, m2C, 0B]) → ([(n1-1)M, m1C,0B],[(n2+1)M, m2C, 1B])
L5 ([n1M, m1C, 1B], [n2M, m2C, 0B]) → ([n1M, (m1-1)C, 0B], [n2M, (m2+1)C, 1B])
Rules for boat coming from right bank to left bank of the river
R1 ([n1M, m1C, 0B], [n2M, m2C, 1B]) → ([(n1+2)M, m1C, 1B], [(n2-2)M, m2C, 0B])
R2 ([n1M, m1C, 0B], [n2M, m2C, 1B]) → ([(n1+1)M,(m1+1)C,1B],[(n2-1)M,(m2-1)C, 0B])
R3 ([n1M, m1C, 0B], [n2M, m2C, 1B]) → ([n1M, (m1+2)C, 1B], [n2M, (m2-2)C, 0B])
R4 ([n1M, m1C, 0B], [n2M, m2C, 1B]) → ([(n1+1)M, m1C,1B],[(n2-1)M, m2C, 0B])
R5 ([n1M, m1C, 0B], [n2M, m2C, 1B]) → ([n1M, (m1+1)C, 1B], [n2M, (m2-1)C, 0B])

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 One of the possible paths
Start → ([3M, 3C, 1B], [0M, 0C, 0B]]
L2: ([2M, 2C, 0B], [1M, 1C, 1B]) 1M,1C →
R4: ([3M, 2C, 1B], [0M, 1C, 0B]) 1M 
L3: ([3M, 0C, 0B], [0M, 3C, 1B]) 2C →
R4: ([3M, 1C, 1B], [0M, 2C, 0B]) 1C 

L1: ([1M, 1C, 0B], [2M, 2C, 1B]) 2M →

R2: ([2M, 2C, 1B], [1M, 1C, 0B]) 1M,1C 

L1: ([0M, 2C, 0B], [3M, 1C, 1B]) 2M →

R5: ([0M, 3C, 1B], [3M, 0C, 0B]) 1C 

L3: ([0M, 1C, 0B], [3M, 2C, 1B]) 2C →

1C 
R5: ([0M, 2C, 1B], [3M, 1C, 0B])
L3: ([0M, 0C, 0B], [3M, 3C, 1B]) 2C → Goal state

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