Search Algorithms in Artificial

Intelligence

Dr Sujit Das
Search Algorithm Terminologies:
• Search: Searching is a step by step procedure to solve a search-problem in a given search
space. A search problem can have three main factors:
• Search Space: Search space represents a set of possible solutions, which a system may have.
• Start State: It is a state from where agent begins the search.
• Goal test: It is a function which observe the current state and returns whether the goal state is
achieved or not.
• Search tree: A tree representation of search problem is called Search tree. The root of
the search tree is the root node which is corresponding to the initial state.
• Actions: It gives the description of all the available actions to the agent.
• Transition model: A description of what each action do, can be represented as a
transition model.
• Path Cost: It is a function which assigns a numeric cost to each path.
• Solution: It is an action sequence which leads from the start node to the goal node.
• Optimal Solution: If a solution has the lowest cost among all solutions.
Properties of Search Algorithms:
• Completeness: A search algorithm is said to be complete if it guarantees to
return a solution if at least any solution exists for any random input.
• Optimality: If a solution found for an algorithm is guaranteed to be the best
solution (lowest path cost) among all other solutions, then such a solution for is
said to be an optimal solution.
• Time Complexity: Time complexity is a measure of time for an algorithm to
complete its task.
• Space Complexity: It is the maximum storage space required at any point during
the search, as the complexity of the problem.
Types of search algorithms
• Based on the search problems we can classify the search algorithms into uninformed (Blind
search) search and informed search (Heuristic search) algorithms.
Uninformed/Blind Search:
• The uninformed search does not contain any domain knowledge such as
closeness, the location of the goal.
• It operates in a brute-force way as it only includes information about how
to traverse the tree and how to identify leaf and goal nodes.
• Uninformed search applies a way in which search tree is searched without
any information about the search space like initial state operators and test
for the goal, so it is also called blind search.
• It examines each node of the tree until it achieves the goal node.
• It can be divided into five main types:
• Breadth-first search
• Uniform cost search
• Depth-first search
• Iterative deepening depth-first search
• Bidirectional Search
Informed Search
• Informed search algorithms use domain knowledge.
• In an informed search, problem information is available which can guide
the search.
• Informed search strategies can find a solution more efficiently than an
uninformed search strategy.
• Informed search is also called a Heuristic search.
• A heuristic is a way which might not always be guaranteed for best
solutions but guaranteed to find a good solution in reasonable time.
• Informed search can solve much complex problem which could not be
solved in another way.
• An example of informed search algorithms is a traveling salesman problem.
• Greedy Search
• A* Search
Uninformed Search Algorithms
• Uninformed search is a class of general-purpose search algorithms which
operates in brute force-way.
• Uninformed search algorithms do not have additional information about
state or search space other than how to traverse the tree, so it is also
called blind search.
• Following are the various types of uninformed search algorithms:
• Breadth-first Search
• Depth-first Search
• Depth-limited Search
• Iterative deepening depth-first search
• Uniform cost search
• Bidirectional Search
Breadth-first Search:
• Breadth-first search is the most common search strategy for traversing a tree or graph.
This algorithm searches breadthwise in a tree or graph, so it is called breadth-first search.
• BFS algorithm starts searching from the root node of the tree and expands all successor
node at the current level before moving to nodes of next level.
• The breadth-first search algorithm is an example of a general-graph search algorithm.
• Breadth-first search implemented using FIFO queue data structure.
• Advantages:
• BFS will provide a solution if any solution exists.
• If there are more than one solutions for a given problem, then BFS will provide the
minimal solution which requires the least number of steps.
• Disadvantages:
• It requires lots of memory since each level of the tree must be saved into memory to
expand the next level.
• BFS needs lots of time if the solution is far away from the root node.
In this tree structure, we have shown the traversing of the tree using BFS algorithm from the root
node S to goal node K. BFS search algorithm traverse in layers, so it will follow the path which is
shown by the dotted arrow, and the traversed path will be:

S---> A--->B---->C--->D---->G--->H--->E---->F---->I---->K
Depth-first Search
• Depth-first search is a recursive algorithm for traversing a tree or graph data structure.
• It is called the depth-first search because it starts from the root node and follows each path to its
greatest depth node before moving to the next path.
• DFS uses a stack data structure for its implementation.
• The process of the DFS algorithm is similar to the BFS algorithm.
• Advantage:
• DFS requires very less memory as it only needs to store a stack of the nodes on the path from
root node to the current node.
• It takes less time to reach to the goal node than BFS algorithm (if it traverses in the right path).
• Disadvantage:
• There is the possibility that many states keep re-occurring, and there is no guarantee of finding
the solution.
• DFS algorithm goes for deep down searching and sometime it may go to the infinite loop.
Root node--->Left node ----> right node.

It will start searching from root node S, and traverse A, then B, then D and E, after traversing E, it will
backtrack the tree as E has no other successor and still goal node is not found. After backtracking it will
traverse node C and then G, and here it will terminate as it found goal node.
Depth-Limited Search Algorithm:
• A depth-limited search algorithm is similar to depth-first search with a predetermined limit.
• Depth-limited search can solve the drawback of the infinite path in the Depth-first search.
• In this algorithm, the node at the depth limit will treat as it has no successor nodes further.
• Depth-limited search can be terminated with two Conditions of failure:
• Standard failure value: It indicates that problem does not have any solution.
• Cutoff failure value: It defines no solution for the problem within a given depth limit.
• Advantages:
• Depth-limited search is Memory efficient.
• Disadvantages:
• Depth-limited search also has a disadvantage of incompleteness.
• It may not be optimal if the problem has more than one solution.
Uniform-cost Search Algorithm:
• Uniform-cost search is a searching algorithm used for traversing a weighted tree or graph.
• This algorithm comes into play when a different cost is available for each edge.
• The primary goal of the uniform-cost search is to find a path to the goal node which has the
lowest cumulative cost.
• Uniform-cost search expands nodes according to their path costs form the root node.
• It can be used to solve any graph/tree where the optimal cost is in demand.
• A uniform-cost search algorithm is implemented by the priority queue. It gives maximum priority
to the lowest cumulative cost.
• Uniform cost search is equivalent to BFS algorithm if the path cost of all edges is the same.
• Advantages:
• Uniform cost search is optimal because at every state the path with the least cost is chosen.
• Disadvantages:
• It does not care about the number of steps involve in searching and only concerned about path
cost. Due to which this algorithm may be stuck in an infinite loop.
Iterative deepening depth-first Search:
• The iterative deepening algorithm is a combination of DFS and BFS algorithms.
• This search algorithm finds out the best depth limit and does it by gradually increasing the limit
until a goal is found.
• This algorithm performs depth-first search up to a certain "depth limit", and it keeps increasing
the depth limit after each iteration until the goal node is found.
• This Search algorithm combines the benefits of Breadth-first search's fast search and depth-first
search's memory efficiency.
• The iterative search algorithm is useful uninformed search when search space is large, and depth
of goal node is unknown.
• Advantages:
• It combines the benefits of BFS and DFS search algorithm in terms of fast search and memory
efficiency.
• Disadvantages:
• The main drawback of IDDFS is that it repeats all the work of the previous phase.
1'st Iteration-----> A
2'nd Iteration----> A, B, C
3'rd Iteration------>A, B, D, E, C, F, G
4'th Iteration------>A, B, D, H, I, E, C, F, K, G
In the fourth iteration, the algorithm will
find the goal node.
Bidirectional Search Algorithm:
• Bidirectional search algorithm runs two simultaneous searches, one form initial state
called as forward-search and other from goal node called as backward-search, to find
the goal node.
• Bidirectional search replaces one single search graph with two small subgraphs in
which one starts the search from an initial vertex and other starts from goal vertex.
• The search stops when these two graphs intersect each other.
• Bidirectional search can use search techniques such as BFS, DFS, DLS, etc.
• Advantages:
• Bidirectional search is fast.
• Bidirectional search requires less memory
• Disadvantages:
• Implementation of the bidirectional search tree is difficult.
• In bidirectional search, one should know the goal state in advance.
In this search tree, bidirectional search algorithm is applied. This algorithm divides one
graph/tree into two sub-graphs. It starts traversing from node 1 in the forward direction and
starts from goal node 16 in the backward direction. The algorithm terminates at node 9 where
two searches meet.
Informed Search Algorithms
• The uninformed search algorithms which looked through search
space for all possible solutions of the problem without having any
additional knowledge about search space.
• But informed search algorithm contains an array of knowledge such
as how far we are from the goal, path cost, how to reach to goal
node, etc.
• This knowledge help agents to explore less to the search space and
find more efficiently the goal node.
• The informed search algorithm is more useful for large search space.
Informed search algorithm uses the idea of heuristic, so it is also
called Heuristic search.
Heuristics function
• Heuristic is a function which is used in Informed Search, and it finds
the most promising path.
• It takes the current state of the agent as its input and produces the
estimation of how close agent is from the goal.
• The heuristic method, however, might not always give the best
solution, but it guaranteed to find a good solution in reasonable time.
• Heuristic function estimates how close a state is to the goal.
• It is represented by h(n), and it calculates the cost of an optimal path
between the pair of states. The value of the heuristic function is
always positive.
Pure Heuristic Search
• Pure heuristic search is the simplest form of heuristic search algorithms.
• It expands nodes based on their heuristic value h(n).
• It maintains two lists, OPEN and CLOSED list.
• In the CLOSED list, it places those nodes which have already expanded and in the
OPEN list, it places nodes which have yet not been expanded.
• On each iteration, each node n with the lowest heuristic value is expanded and
generates all its successors and n is placed to the closed list.
• The algorithm continues unit a goal state is found.
• In the informed search we will discuss two main algorithms which are given
below:
• Best First Search Algorithm(Greedy search)
• A* Search Algorithm
Best-first Search Algorithm (Greedy Search):
• Greedy best-first search algorithm always selects the path which appears
best at that moment.
• It is the combination of depth-first search and breadth-first search
algorithms.
• It uses the heuristic function and search.
• Best-first search allows us to take the advantages of both algorithms.
• With the help of best-first search, at each step, we can choose the most
promising node.
• In the best first search algorithm, we expand the node which is closest to
the goal node and the closest cost is estimated by heuristic function
• The greedy best first algorithm is implemented by the priority queue.
Best first search algorithm:
• Step 1: Place the starting node into the OPEN list.
• Step 2: If the OPEN list is empty, Stop and return failure.
• Step 3: Remove the node n, from the OPEN list which has the lowest value
of h(n), and places it in the CLOSED list.
• Step 4: Expand the node n, and generate the successors of node n.
• Step 5: Check each successor of node n, and find whether any node is a
goal node or not. If any successor node is goal node, then return success
and terminate the search, else proceed to Step 6.
• Step 6: For each successor node, algorithm checks for evaluation function
f(n), and then check if the node has been in either OPEN or CLOSED list. If
the node has not been in both list, then add it to the OPEN list.
• Step 7: Return to Step 2.
Best first search
Example

Expand the nodes of S and put in the CLOSED list

Initialization: Open [A, B], Closed [S]
Iteration 1: Open [A], Closed [S, B]
Iteration 2: Open [E, F, A], Closed [S, B]
: Open [E, A], Closed [S, B, F]
Iteration 3: Open [I, G, E, A], Closed [S, B, F]
: Open [I, E, A], Closed [S, B, F, G]
Hence the final solution path will be: S----> B----->F----> G
A* Search Algorithm
• A* search is the most commonly known form of best-first search.
• It uses heuristic function h(n), and cost to reach the node n from the start
state g(n).
• It has combined features of UCS and greedy best-first search, by which it
solve the problem efficiently.
• A* search algorithm finds the shortest path through the search space using
the heuristic function.
• This search algorithm expands less search tree and provides optimal result
faster.
• A* algorithm is similar to UCS except that it uses g(n)+h(n) instead of g(n).
A* Search Algorithm
• In A* search algorithm, we use search heuristic as well as
the cost to reach the node. Hence we can combine both
costs as following, and this sum is called as a fitness
number.
Algorithm of A* search
• Step1: Place the starting node in the OPEN list.
• Step 2: Check if the OPEN list is empty or not, if the list is empty then return failure and
stops.
• Step 3: Select the node from the OPEN list which has the smallest value of evaluation
function (g+h), if node n is goal node then return success and stop, otherwise
• Step 4: Expand node n and generate all of its successors, and put n into the closed list.
For each successor n', check whether n' is already in the OPEN or CLOSED list, if not then
compute evaluation function for n' and place into Open list.
• Step 5: Else if node n' is already in OPEN and CLOSED, then it should be attached to the
back pointer which reflects the lowest g(n') value.
• Step 6: Return to Step 2.
Initialization: {(S, 5)}
Iteration1: {(S--> A, 4), (S-->G, 10)}
Iteration2: {(S--> A-->C, 4), (S--> A-->B, 7), (S-->G, 10)}
Iteration3: {(S--> A-->C--->G, 6), (S--> A-->C--->D, 11), (S--> A-->B, 7), (S-->G,
10)}
Iteration 4 will give the final result, as S--->A--->C--->G it provides the optimal
path with cost 6.