CSE 359 (CEN 307) &

CSE 360 (CEN 308)

Artificial Intelligence
By
Md. Palash Uddin
Assistant Professor
Dept. of CSE
Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology
University, Dinajpur. 1
Intelligent Agent (Cont’d)
 Building Goal-Based Agents
• We have a goal to reach
– Driving from point A to point B
– Put 8 queens on a chess board such that no one attacks another
– Prove that John is an ancestor of Mary
• We have information about where we are now at the beginning
• We have a set of actions we can take to move around (change from
where we are)
• Objective: find a sequence of legal actions which will bring us from
the start point to a goal

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 Initial Simplifying Assumptions (Abstraction)

• Environment is static
– no changes in environment while problem is being solved

• Environment is observable

• Environment and actions are discrete

– (typically assumed, but we will see some exceptions)

• Environment is deterministic

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 Problem-Solving Agents
• Intelligent agents can solve problems by searching a state-space
 State-space Model
– the agent’s model of the world
– usually a set of discrete states
– e.g., in driving, the states in the model could be towns/cities

 Goal State(s)
– a goal is defined as a desirable state for an agent
– there may be many states which satisfy the goal test
• e.g., drive to a town with a ski-resort
– or just one state which satisfies the goal
• e.g., drive to Dinajpur

 Operators (actions, successor function)

– operators are legal actions which the agent can take to move from one state to
another

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 Representing states
• State space:
– Includes the initial state S and all other states that are reachable from S by a
sequence of actions
– A state space can be organized as a graph:
nodes: states in the space
arcs: actions/operations
• The size of a problem is usually described in terms of the number
of states (or the size of the state space) that are possible.
– Tic-Tac-Toe has about 3^9 states.
– Checkers has about 10^40 states.
– Rubik's Cube has about 10^19 states.
– Chess has about 10^120 states in a typical game.
– GO has more states than Chess

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 The State-Space Graph
• Graphs:
– nodes, arcs, directed arcs, paths

• Search graphs:
– States are nodes
– operators are directed arcs
– solution is a path from start S to goal G

• Problem formulation:
– Give an abstract description of states, operators, initial state and goal state.

• Problem solving:
– Generate a part of the search space that contains a solution

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 State-Space Problem Formulation
A problem is defined by four items:
1. Initial state

2. Actions or successor function

3. Goal test (or set of goal states)

4. Path cost (additive)

A Solution is a sequence of actions leading from the initial

state to a goal state
 Example: Traveling in Romania
• On holiday in Romania; currently in Arad
• Flight leaves tomorrow from Bucharest

• Formulate goal:
– be in Bucharest

• Formulate problem:
– states: various cities
– actions/operators: drive between cities

• Find solution
– By searching through states to find a goal
– sequence of cities, e.g., Arad, Sibiu, Fagaras, Bucharest

• Execute states that lead to a solution

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Example: Traveling in Romania

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State-Space Problem Formulation for Traveling in Romania
1. Initial state: Arad

2. Actions or successor function

S(x) = set of action–state pairs
e.g., S(Arad) = {<Arad  Zerind, Zerind>, … }

3. Goal test (or set of goal states)

x = "at Bucharest”, Checkmate(x)

4. Path cost (additive)

e.g., sum of distances, number of actions executed, etc.
c(x,a,y) is the step cost, assumed to be ≥ 0

A solution is a sequence of actions leading from the initial state

(Arad) to the goal state (Bucharest)
 The Traveling Salesperson Problem
• Given a road map of n cities, find the shortest tour which visits
every city on the map exactly once and then return to the original
C
city (Hamiltonian circuit)

Geometric Version: B
A D
– a complete graph of n vertices
F
– n!/2n legal tours

– Find one legal tour that is shortest

E
– State: sequence of cities visited

– S0 = A

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 Problem Formulation: The Traveling
Salesperson Problem
1. Initial state: A C

2. Actions or successor function:

B
S(x) = set of action–state pairs
e.g., S(A) = {<A B, C>, … } A D
F
3. Goal test (or set of goal states)
x = "at A”, Checkmate(x)
4. Path cost (additive) E
e.g., sum of distances, number of actions executed, etc.
c(x,a,y) is the step cost, assumed to be ≥ 0

A Solution is a sequence of actions leading from the initial state to a

goal state
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 Example: 8-queens problem
 Place eight queens on a chessboard such that no queen attacks any other!
 Total # of states: 4.4x10^9
 Total # of solutions: 12 (or 96)

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 State-Space problem formulation
• States?
-any arrangement of n<=8 queens
-or arrangements of n<=8 queens in leftmost n
columns, 1 per column, such that no queen
attacks any other.

• Initial state? no queens on the board

• Actions? -add queen to any empty square
-or add queen to leftmost empty square such that it is not
attacked by other queens.

• Goal test? 8 queens on the board, none attacked.

• Path cost? 1 per move
 Example: Robot Assembly

• States

• Initial state

• Actions

• Goal test

• Path Cost

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 Example: Robot Assembly

• States: configuration of robot (angles, positions) and object parts

• Initial state: any configuration of robot and object parts

• Actions: continuous motion of robot joints

• Goal test: object assembled?

• Path Cost: time-taken or number of actions 17

 Learning a spam email classifier
States: settings of the parameters in our model

Initial state: random parameter settings

Actions: moving in parameter space

Goal test: optimal accuracy on the training data

Path Cost: time taken to find optimal parameters

This is an optimization problem – many machine learning problems

can be cast as optimization.
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 Example: 8-puzzle
Given an initial configuration of 8 numbered tiles on a 3 x 3
board, move the tiles in such a way so as to produce a
desired goal configuration of the tiles.

• states? locations of tiles

• initial state? given

• actions? move blank left, right, up, down

• goal test? goal state (given)

• path cost? 1 per move 19

 8 puzzle
• State: 3 x 3 array configuration of the tiles on the board.
• Operators: Move Blank square Left, Right, Up or Down.
– This is a more efficient encoding of the operators than one in
which each of four possible moves for each of the 8 distinct tiles
is used.
• Initial State: A particular configuration of the board.
• Goal: A particular configuration of the board.
• The state space is partitioned into two subspaces
• NP-complete problem, requiring O(2^k) steps where k is the length of the
solution path.
• 15-puzzle problems (4 x 4 grid with 15 numbered tiles),
and N-puzzles (N = n^2-1)

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A portion of the state space of a 8-
Puzzle problem
5 4
6 1 8
7 3 2

5 4 5 4 8
6 1 8 6 1
7 3 2 7 3 2

5 1 4 5 4
6 8 6 1 8
7 3 2 7 3 2

5 1 4
6 8
7 3 2
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 Cryptarithmetic puzzles
TWO
TWO+
FOUR
E.g., setting F = 1, O = 4, R = 8, T = 7, W = 3, U = 6
gives 734+734=1468

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 Cryptarithmetic puzzles…
TWO Trick: introduce auxiliary variables
TWO+ X, Y
FOUR O + O = 10X + R
W + W + X = 10Y + U
T + T + Y = 10F + O

O R W U T F

also need pairwise constraints between

original variables if they are supposed to
be different]
X Y
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 A Water Jug Problem
• You have a 4-
gallon and a 3-
gallon water jug

• You have a
faucet with an
unlimited
amount of water

• You need to get

exactly 2 gallons
in 4-gallon jug
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Water Jug Puzzle-solving as Search
• State representation: (x, y)
– x: Contents of four gallon
– y: Contents of three gallon

• Start state: (0, 0)

• Goal state (2, n)

• Operators
– Fill 3-gallon from faucet, fill 4-gallon from faucet
– Fill 3-gallon from 4-gallon , fill 4-gallon from 3-gallon
– Empty 3-gallon into 4-gallon, empty 4-gallon into 3-gallon
– Dump 3-gallon down drain, dump 4-gallon down drain

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Production Rules for the Water Jug Problem
1 (x,y)  (4,y) Fill the 4-gallon jug
if x < 4

2 (x,y)  (x,3) Fill the 3-gallon jug

if y < 3

3 (x,y)  (x – d,y) Pour some water out of the 4-gallon jug

if x > 0

4 (x,y)  (x,y – d) Pour some water out of the 3-gallon jug

if x > 0

5 (x,y)  (0,y) Empty the 4-gallon jug on the ground

if x > 0

6 (x,y)  (x,0) Empty the 3-gallon jug on the ground

if y > 0

7 (x,y)  (4,y – (4 – x)) Pour water from the 3-gallon jug into the 4-gallon jug
if x + y ≥ 4 and y > 0 until the 4-gallon jug is full

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The Water Jug Problem (cont’d)
8 (x,y)  (x – (3 – y),3) Pour water from the 4-gallon jug into the 3-gallon jug
if x + y ≥ 3 and x > 0 until the 3-gallon jug is full

9 (x,y)  (x + y, 0) Pour all the water from the 3-gallon jug into the 4-gallon
if x + y ≤ 4 and y > 0 jug

10 (x,y)  (0, x + y) Pour all the water from the 4-gallon jug into the 3-gallon
if x + y ≤ 3 and x > 0 jug

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One Solution to the Water Jug
Problem
Gallons in the 4- Gallons in the 3- Rule Applied
Gallon Jug Gallon Jug

0 0 2

0 3 9

3 0 2

3 3 7

4 2 5

0 2 9

2 0

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 Missionaries and Cannibals
There are 3 missionaries, 3 cannibals,
and 1 boat that can carry up to two
people on one side of a river.
• Goal: Move all the missionaries and
cannibals across the river.
• Constraint: Missionaries can never
be outnumbered by cannibals on either
side of river, or else the missionaries
are killed. Outnumber
• State: configuration of missionaries
and cannibals and boat on each side of
river.
• Operators: Move boat containing
some set of occupants across the river
(in either direction) to the other side.
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 Missionaries and Cannibals Solution

Near side
Far side
0 Initial setup: MMMCCC B
-
1 Two cannibals cross over: MMMC
B CC
2 One comes back: MMMCC B
C
3 Two cannibals go over again: MMM
B CCC
4 One comes back: MMMC B
CC
5 Two missionaries cross: MC
B MMCC
6 A missionary & cannibal return: MMCC B
MC 30
 Recape: Formalizing Search in a State Space
• A state space is a graph, (V, E) where V is a set of nodes and E is a set of arcs, where
each arc is directed from a node to another node
• node: corresponds to a state
– state description
– plus optionally other information related to the parent of the
node, operation to generate the node from that parent, and
other bookkeeping data)
• arc: corresponds to an applicable action/operation.
– the source and destination nodes are called as parent
(immediate predecessor) and child (immediate successor)
nodes with respect to each other
– ancestors( (predecessors) and descendents (successors)
– each arc has a fixed, non-negative cost associated with it,
corresponding to the cost of the action

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 Tree-based Search
• Basic idea:
– Exploration of state space by generating successors of already-
explored states (a.k.a. expanding states).
– Every state is evaluated: is it a goal state?
• In practice, the solution space can be a graph,
not a tree
– E.g., 8-puzzle
– More general approach is graph search
– Tree search can end up repeatedly visiting the same nodes
• Unless it keeps track of all nodes visited
• …but this could take vast amounts of memory

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Tree search example

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Tree search example

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Tree search example

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Tree search example

This “strategy” is
what differentiates
different search
algorithms

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 States versus Nodes
• A state is a (representation of) a physical configuration

• A node is a data structure constituting part of a search tree contains info such as: state, parent node,
action, path cost g(x), depth

• The Expand function creates new nodes, filling in the various fields and using the SuccessorFn of
the problem to create the corresponding states.
 State Spaces versus Search Trees
• State Space
– Set of valid states for a problem
– Linked by operators
– e.g., 20 valid states (cities) in the Romanian travel problem
• Search Tree
– Root node = initial state
– Child nodes = states that can be visited from parent
– Note that the depth of the tree can be infinite
• E.g., via repeated states
– Partial search tree
• Portion of tree that has been expanded so far
– Fringe
• Leaves of partial search tree, candidates for expansion

Search trees = data structure to search state-space

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Search Tree for the 8 puzzle problem

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 Search Strategies
• A search strategy is defined by picking the order of node
expansion

• Strategies are evaluated along the following dimensions:

– completeness: does it always find a solution if one exists?
– time complexity: number of nodes generated
– space complexity: maximum number of nodes in memory
– optimality: does it always find a least-cost solution?

• Time and space complexity are measured in terms of

– b: maximum branching factor of the search tree
– d: depth of the least-cost solution
– m: maximum depth of the state space (may be ∞)

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 Why Search can be hard
Assuming b=10, 1000 nodes/sec, 100 bytes/node

Depth of Nodes to
Solution Expand Time Memory

0 1 1 millisecond 100 bytes

2 111 0.1 seconds 11 kbytes

4 11,111 11 seconds 1 megabyte

8 108 31 hours 11 giabytes

12 1012 35 years 111 terabytes

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 Next Topics
• Uninformed search
– Breadth-first, depth-first
– Uniform cost
– Iterative deepening

• Informed (heuristic) search

– Greedy best-first
– A*
– Memory-bounded heuristic search
– And more….

• Local search and optimization

– Hill-climbing
– Simulated annealing
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– Genetic algorithms
 Summary
• Problem-solving agents where search consists of
– state space
– operators
– start state
– goal states

• Abstraction and problem formulation

• Search trees: an effective way to represent the search process

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