Problem Solving –

State-Space Search
and Control Strategies
Chapter 2 (a)
Problem Characteristics
 Heuristic search is a very general method
applicable to a large class of problem.
 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?
Contd..
 Decomposable problems can be solved by the
divide-and-conquer technique.
 Each sub-problem is simpler to solve.
 Each sub-problem can be handed over to a different
processor. Thus can be solved in parallel processing
environment.
 Is problem non decomposable? Need different
strategies
 For example, Block world problem is non
decomposable.
Initial State (State0) Goal State

A
C B
A B C

Start: ON(C, A) ….
Goal: ON(B, C)  ON(A, B)
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.
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?
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.
Example - Irrecoverable

 Chess (solution steps cannot be

undone)
 A stupid move cannot be undone.
 Can be solved by planning process.
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
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/path. Unless all routes are
known, the shortest is difficult to know.
 This is a best-path problem whereas water jug is any-
path problem.
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.
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.
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.
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 change 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.
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.
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.
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}
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}
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
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
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 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.
 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.
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 to same state several times. This is because control
strategy is not systematic.
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.
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)
 (0, 0)

(4, 0) (0, 3)

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

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
 (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

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.
 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;
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.
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).
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  C1 63 
11 20 10 5 15
31 41 46 63
Paths explored. Assume C1 to be the start city Distance

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
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.
 Constraint:
 At any point in time, cannibals should not be more than
missionaries.
 If the cannibals ever outnumber the missionaries (on either
bank) then the missionaries will be eaten.
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] )
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.
 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])
 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 

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