Informed (Heuristic) Search

Abstract

Introduction: In the previous Chapter, we have presented several blind search or uninformed search techniques. Uninformed search methods systematically explore the search space until the goal is reached. As evident, uninformed search methods pursue options that many times lead away from the goal. Even for some small problems the search can take unacceptable amounts of time and/or space. The blind search techniques lack knowledge about the problem to solve and this makes them inefficient in many cases. Using problem specific knowledge can significantly improve the search speed. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011.