Artificial Intelligence

Lecture No. 8
Dr. Asad Ali Safi

Assistant Professor,
Department of Computer Science,
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT)
Islamabad, Pakistan.
 Summary of Previous Lecture
• Types of search Algorithms
• Uninformed Search
• Informed Search
• Breadth-first searching
• Depth-first search
 Today’s Lecture
• Informed (Heuristic) search
• Heuristic evaluation function
• Greedy Best-First Search
• A* Search
 Informed (Heuristic) search
• Heuristic search is an AI search technique that
employs heuristic for its moves.
• Heuristic is a rule of thumb that probably
leads to a solution.
• Heuristics play a major role in search
strategies because of exponential nature of
the most problems. Heuristics help to reduce
the number of alternatives from an
exponential number to a polynomial number.
 Heuristic search
• In Artificial Intelligence, heuristic search has a
general meaning, and a more specialized
technical meaning.
• In a general sense, the term heuristic is used for
any advice that is often effective, but is not
guaranteed to work in every case.
• Within the heuristic search architecture,
however, the term heuristic usually refers to the
special case of a heuristic evaluation function.
 Heuristic information
• In order to solve larger problems, domain-
specific knowledge must be added to improve
search efficiency.
• Information about the problem include the
nature of states, cost of transforming from one
state to another, and characteristics of the goals.
• This information can often be expressed in the
form of heuristic evaluation function, say f(n,g), a
function of the nodes n and/or the goals g.
 Heuristic evaluation function
• Heuristic evaluation function estimates the
cost of an optimal path between a pair of
states in a single-agent path-finding problem, .
• For example, Euclidean or airline distance is an
estimate of the highway distance between a
pair of locations.
 Manhattan Distance
• Manhattan distance is a common heuristic
function for the sliding-tile puzzles.
• Manhattan distance is computed by counting
the number of moves along the grid that each
tile is displaced from its goal position, and
summing these values over all faces.
 Heuristic evaluation function
• For a fixed goal state, a heuristic evaluation is a
function of a node, say h(n), that estimates the
distance from node, say n to the given state.
• h(n) = estimated cost of the cheapest path from
node n to a goal node

• There is a whole family of Best-First Search

algorithms with different evaluation functions
– Each has a heuristic function h(n)
Following is a list of heuristic search
techniques…
• Greedy best-first search
• A* search
• Recursive best-first search
• Pure Heuristic Search
• Iterative-Deepening A*
• Depth-First Branch-And-Bound
• Heuristic Path Algorithm
 Greedy Best-First Search
• Greedy Best-First search tries to expand the node that is
closest to the goal assuming it will lead to a solution quickly
– f(n) = h(n)
– “Greedy Search”
• to refer specifically to a search with a heuristic that attempts to predict
how close the end of a path is to a solution, so that paths which are
judged to be closer to a solution are extended first. This specific type
of search is called greedy best-first search.
• Implementation
– expand the “most desirable” node into the fringe queue
– sort the queue in decreasing order of desirability

• Example: consider the straight-line distance heuristic hSLD

– Expand the node that appears to be closest to the goal
Greedy Best-First Search
 Greedy Best-First Search
• hSLD(In(Arid)) = 366

• Notice that the values of hSLD cannot be

computed from the problem itself

• It takes some experience to know that hSLD is

correlated with actual road distances
– Therefore a useful heuristic
Greedy Best-First Search
Greedy Best-First Search
Greedy Best-First Search
 Greedy Best-First Search
• Complete
– No, GBFS can get stuck in loops (e.g. bouncing back and
forth between cities)
• Time
– O(bm) but a good heuristic can have dramatic improvement
• Space
– O(bm) – keeps all the nodes in memory
• Optimal
– No!
Robot Navigation
 Robot Navigation
f(N) = h(N), with h(N) = Manhattan distance to the goal

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 3 4 5 6

7 5 4 3 5

6 3 2 1 0 1 2 4

7 6 5

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 3 4 5 6
 Robot Navigation
f(N) = h(N), with h(N) = Manhattan distance to the goal

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 3 4 5 6

7 5 4 3 5

6 3 2 1 00 1 2 4

What happened???
77 6 5

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 3 4 5 6
 A* Search
• A* algorithm is a best-first search algorithm in which
the cost associated with a node is
f(n) = g(n) + h(n),
where g(n) is the cost of the path from the initial state
to node n and h(n) is the heuristic estimate or the cost
or a path from node n to a goal.
• Thus, f(n) estimates the lowest total cost of any
solution path going through node n. At each point a
node with lowest f value is chosen for expansion.
• Ties among nodes of equal f value should be broken in
favor of nodes with lower h values. The algorithm
terminates when a goal is chosen for expansion.
 A* Search
• A* (A star) is the most widely known in AI
– It evaluates nodes by combining g(n) and h(n)
– f(n) = g(n) + h(n)
– Where
• g(n) = cost so far to reach n
• h(n) = estimated cost to goal from n
• f(n) = estimated total cost of path through n
 A* Search
• When h(n) = actual cost to goal
– Only nodes in the correct path are expanded
– Optimal solution is found
• When h(n) < actual cost to goal
– Additional nodes are expanded
– Optimal solution is found
• When h(n) > actual cost to goal
– Optimal solution can be overlooked
Greedy Best-First Search
A* Search
A* Search
A* Search
A* Search
A* Search
 A* Search
• A* expands nodes in increasing f value
– Gradually adds f-contours of nodes (like breadth-
first search adding layers)
– Contour i has all nodes f=fi where fi < fi+1
 A* Search
• Complete
– Yes, unless there are infinitely many nodes with f <= f(G)
• Time
– Exponential in [relative error of h x length of soln]
– The better the heuristic, the better the time
• Best case h is perfect, O(d)
• Worst case h = 0, O(bd) same as BFS
• Space
– 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
• Optimal
– Yes, cannot expand fi+1 unless fi is finished
 Once more
• We kept looking at nodes closer and closer to the
goal, but were accumulating costs as we got further
from the initial state
• Our goal is not to minimize the distance from the
current head of our path to the goal, we want to
minimize the overall length of the path to the goal!
• Let g(N) be the cost of the best
path found so far between the initial
node and N

• f(N) = g(N) + h(N)

 Robot Navigation
f(N) = g(N)+h(N), with h(N) = Manhattan distance to goal

8
8+3 7
7+4 6
6+3
6+5 5
5+6 4
4+7 3
3+8 2
2+9 3
3+10 4 5 6

7
7+2 5
5+6 4
4+7 3
3+8 5

6
6+1 3 2
2+9 1
1+10 0
0+11 1 2 4

7
7+0 6
6+1 5

8
8+1 7
7+2 6
6+3 5
5+4 4
4+5 3
3+6 2
2+7 3
3+8 4 5 6
 Complexity Of Finding Optimal Solutions

• The time complexity of a heuristic search

algorithm depends on the accuracy of the
heuristic function.
• For example, if the heuristic evaluation function is
an exact estimator, then A* search algorithm runs
in linear time, expanding only those nodes on an
optimal solution path.
• Conversely, with a heuristic that returns zero
everywhere, A* algorithm becomes uniform-cost
search, which has exponential complexity.
 Summery of Today’s Lecture
• Informed (Heuristic) search
• Heuristic evaluation function
• Greedy Best-First Search
• A* Search